for Cold Climate Housing and much more

Last Updated: , Created: Tuesday, September 14th, 1999

Cracked Driveway

Lisa in Edmonton has a water main that runs right under her driveway. The shutoff valve even comes up in the middle of the driveway. Erosion appears to be following the pipe and has cracked her driveway. She wants to temporarily fix it for now, and later replace the driveway, but doesn't feel she can move the plumbing at all.

If you can't solve the problem you either need to have something strong enough to bridge a problem, or something easy to repair. A concrete driveway with steel reinforcing bars could bridge over the erosion problem. Of interlocking bricks would allow you to pull up any sinking bricks, add more sand road gravel below and put it back level whenever necessary.

When you are pouring concrete in our cold climate you need air-entrained concrete. Until recently that was not possible to do with small batches. I mentioned a product called TuffCrete that was specifically an air entrained concrete for small batches. It has since been replaced by a product called High Strength Concrete, which does provide a certain measure of air entrainment. It is best mixed in a barrel mixer but still provides exceptional concrete when mixed with a shovel.

Air entrained High Strength Concrete is sold by King Packaging Co. and is available in many home improvement centres. It costs more so many stores do not keep it in stock. Push your local store to stock quality materials when you don't want to re-do the job year after year.

 


Keywords: Driveway, Concrete, Repair

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