Driveway pavers in Pittsburg CA - a surface built to carry your car on clay soil

Most people call us when an old concrete driveway has cracked, sunk along the tire lines or started holding water by the garage, and they want something that takes a car without the same trouble coming back. The price mostly turns on the size of the drive, whether old concrete has to come out, how deep we dig and how thick the base needs to be for your soil, whether drain pipe goes underneath, and the paver and pattern you pick, while the schedule turns on the weather, the digging and any city permit the job needs. I write all of that up in plain terms when I come out, so you see your own figures before anything starts, and if the front walk is tired too, it's easier to plan walkway construction at the same time.

Before we dig, I go over the base and drainage with you, because that's the part you'll never see again and the part that decides how the driveway holds up. Once that's settled, we tear out the old surface, dig down and grade so water runs away from the house, then lay the base in layers and compact each one so it won't settle later. We set a solid edge along the sides so the pavers can't spread, level a thin bed of sand to set them on, and lay interlocking pavers anywhere a car will drive, because the pattern spreads the weight across the whole surface. Then we cut the edges clean, sweep sand into the joints and run the compactor over the top until it all locks together.

A new driveway often brings up the rest of the front of the house. Where the drive is cut into a slope, the ground beside it may need holding back, and we do retaining wall construction so the wall and the pavers are planned together. Where older brick steps or a front wall look worn next to new pavers, masonry restoration can bring them back so the whole front looks like it belongs to the house.

In Pittsburg, the city issues engineering permits for driveway improvements, and its code requires one for any grading, any concrete work and any work in the right of way, the strip along the street that belongs to the city. A paver driveway almost always involves digging and grading, and a lot of them tie into the curb or sidewalk, so plan on the city having a say. The city decides what your job needs, so I check with them before we start, and when a permit is required we pull it and handle the paperwork.

One Contra Costa paver contractor says the county's clay-heavy soil often means extra digging and a thicker compacted base in cities like Pittsburg, and that lines up with what we see. We're based in Pittsburg and work in the cities around it, and we run into the same slow-draining ground on driveways in Antioch and Bay Point, so I plan the dig around your soil instead of a stock depth.