I did a 5"-thick, fiber-reinforced driveway in my old house, 8ft x 100ft, about 8 years ago. The quotes were north of $10k, or about 1.5x what I made in a year.
I said "PHUCKET, We're doing it live!!!1!1"
- Rented a Bobcat, tore up the asphalt driveway myself.
- Dump trucks came by and I dumped the old asphalt mit der Bobcat.
- Ordered road base, delivered by Slinger Jones. laid down the base and leveled it out.
- Picked up 3/4ton loads in the back of Cleetus I on lunch breaks over the course of a week to fill in the roadbase shortage I still had.
- Set the woodframe borders, chalk-lined and leveled.
- Spec'd the concrete mix, ordered so many yards (I forget how much it took).
- Rented trowels/bull floats from Sunbelt.
- Invited all the male members of my extended family to bucket-brigade wet cement from the cement trucks as the driveway was too long and I didn't have a pump.
- Covered in plastic sheet, let it dry
- rented a cutter to make the appropriate break lines in the driveway.
I highlighted the one line item as it was AMAZINGLY HARD WORK doing all that concrete running. It was April, cloudy with a very light drizzle, maybe 50 degrees, and by the time we had put down all the concrete I had 8 pissed-off family members that swore they would never do that again.
Minus the cost for doing the labor myself/with family, the total equipment/materials cost was just under $3k. I was incredibly proud of the job I did but doing a concrete driveway is tough shite.
Just a cool starry bra to emphasize the importance of getting a good company to either:
- Patch your asphalt driveway
- do a concrete driveway.