Concreting in Sydney
Concrete driveways in Sydney
New concrete driveways for homes and businesses across greater Sydney, in plain, coloured or exposed aggregate. A driveway takes more weight and more weather than anything else on a property, and the crossing at the kerb answers to the council rather than to you.
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Driveway work
Six things a driveway job turns out to be
A new driveway
A full pour on ground that has been dug out, filled with crushed rock and compacted, with the mesh on chairs and the falls set before the boards go on.
Replacing one that has gone
Breaking out and carting the old slab is half the job, and it is where the surprises live. Roots, old fill and soft ground all change what has to happen next.
Widening or extending
A second car, a caravan or a turning area added to a drive that is already there. Matching an existing colour and finish is easier to promise than to deliver, so the joint is usually made a feature.
The crossing at the kerb
The strip between the kerb and your boundary is council ground, built to the council specification and approved by them. It is a separate conversation and it starts early.
Cleaning a drive that is still sound
Dirt, algae and oil on good concrete is a cleaning job, not a concreting job. It costs a fraction of a new pour and it takes an afternoon.
See pressure cleaningGrip on a steep one
A smooth finish on a Sydney hillside is a skid pan in the wet. A textured coat puts grip back into the surface without touching the slab underneath.
See slip-resistant finishHow a driveway goes in, and where the decisions fall
Before anything else
Sort out the crossing
The strip between the kerb and your front boundary is council ground. If it is being built, widened or moved it needs the council in front of it and it is built to their specification, not to a preference. That conversation starts before the rest of the job is planned around it.
On site
Levels at both ends
A driveway has to meet the garage floor at the top and the kerb at the bottom without a lip at either end, and shed water away from the house on the way through. Get the crest wrong and a low car scrapes. Get the fall wrong and rain collects at the roller door.
Then
Break out what is there
The old slab comes up and gets carted, and that is when the ground tells you what it has been hiding. Tree roots, old fill, buried services and soft patches all change the dig, and a street tree brings the council back into the conversation.
Next
Build the sub base
A driveway fails from underneath, not from the top. Crushed rock goes in and is compacted in layers so the load from a car spreads into ground that is not going to keep settling once the concrete is hard.
Before the truck is called
Formwork, then steel on chairs
Boards set the shape, the curves and the fall. Reinforcing mesh sits on bar chairs so it ends up inside the concrete with cover over it, lapped and tied. Mesh left lying on the dirt is doing nothing, and under a vehicle that matters more than it does on a path.
Pour day
Where the three finishes part ways
Up to the float, all three are the same pour. Plain concrete then gets broomed for grip. Coloured concrete was decided back at the batching plant, so what happens here is the finish over the top of it. Exposed aggregate gets a surface retarder sprayed on and is washed back the following day to uncover the stone.
While it is young
Cut the joints
Saw cuts put the cracking on a line somebody chose. On a drive they also break a long run into panels small enough that shrinkage never gets the leverage to pull one apart across its width.
Then stay off it
Cure, and keep the car off
Feet go on it early. A car goes on much later. Concrete keeps gaining strength for weeks after it feels hard, and parking on a young slab is how you end up with a pair of cracks running down the wheel tracks. The days for your pour come with the quote rather than off a chart.
Plain, coloured or exposed aggregate
The three finishes are the same pour up to the float. What separates them is what happens in the hour after it, and how the drive behaves for the next twenty years.
Grey concrete with a broom finish. The default, and there is a reason it stays the default: it is the least expensive of the three, the texture from the broom gives you grip in the wet without anything being added, and it sits quietly against any house colour.
What it does well. Patching and extending later is straightforward, because there is no colour or stone to match. A cracked panel can be cut out and replaced and the repair is not the first thing you see from the street.
What to expect. Grey concrete shows oil. A drip under the engine is visible on plain concrete in a way it is not on exposed aggregate, and it gets worse if the slab is never sealed.
Worth knowing. Broom direction is a real choice. Brooming across the slope rather than down it gives a steep drive more to hold onto underfoot.
Local conditions
What a Sydney front yard adds to a driveway
The crossing is not yours
Everything between the kerb and your front boundary sits in the road reserve. Building it, widening it or moving it needs the council, and it is built to their specification. It is the one part of a driveway where somebody else writes the rules.
Steep blocks
Plenty of Sydney drives run up or down at a serious angle. Two things follow: a smooth finish on a slope is a hazard the first time it rains, and the crest where the drive meets the garage or the street decides whether a low car scrapes.
A frontage with nowhere to stand
On a terrace or a narrow semi the driveway is the entire front yard, and there is no room for a truck, a bobcat and a spoil pile at the same time. The staging gets worked out at the quote, because there is no room to improvise on the day.
Street trees and their roots
A street tree is usually a council asset and digging near one needs approval. Roots are also the most common reason an old drive has lifted, and lifting concrete off a root without a plan just gives you the same problem again.
Salt air near the coast
Salt finds its way into concrete through cracks and open surfaces and goes to work on the steel inside. Along the coast that makes the cover over the mesh, the joints and a maintained sealer matter more than they do inland.
Where the water actually ends up
A driveway is a large hard surface that used to be garden, and all of that water now has to go somewhere. It should not be the garage, the house wall, or over the boundary into a neighbour. That is decided with the falls, before the boards go down.
What usually gets booked with a driveway
A new pour is not always the answer, and it is rarely the only job. If the concrete is sound and the problem is dirt, algae and oil, a pressure clean brings it back for a fraction of the cost of replacing it. If it is sound but porous and marking easily, a sealer keeps water and oil out of the surface and deepens the colour already in it. If it is sound but slippery, which is most steep drives that were finished smooth, a textured coat puts the grip back without breaking anything out.
Where a new pour is the right answer, the paths, footpaths and patio slabs around it are the same trade on the same day, so the levels meet instead of finishing at a step.
Questions people ask before a driveway is poured
The ones that come up when a drive is being priced.
Get your driveway quote
Tell us roughly how long and how wide the drive is, whether there is an old slab to come out, which finish you are leaning towards, and whether the crossing at the kerb is part of it. That is enough to quote from.