Paving near you

Start with the part that has nothing to do with asphalt. 811 is the free national before-you-dig service, and its instruction is plain: anyone who plans to dig should contact 811 or go to their state 811 center's website before digging, to request that the approximate location of buried utilities be marked with paint or flags so that you do not unintentionally dig into an underground utility line. The request goes in a few business days ahead of the work. Depth is no excuse for skipping it, because some utilities sit just inches below the surface and every digging project, regardless of depth, requires contacting 811. The marks cover utility-owned lines only, so tell the crew about anything a previous owner buried themselves, and once the marks are down, dig carefully around them.

Then the pavement is built from the bottom up. Turf, topsoil and any old surface come off until the crew reaches soil that can be compacted; the subgrade is shaped to the finished slope and rolled; a graded stone base goes down and is compacted in layers rather than in one deep lift; and the asphalt is placed hot and rolled before it cools, in one or more lifts depending on what will drive on it. A crew that finishes a large driveway suspiciously fast has usually found the time in the base, and that is the one saving that never shows up until the second or third winter.

The grade is set before any asphalt arrives. Pavement has to shed water somewhere other than the garage door and the foundation, which means a deliberate slope, a defined and supported edge so the asphalt does not crumble where the wheels run off it, and a decision about the low corner. Ask to be shown where the water is meant to go while the base is still open. Afterwards it is a much more expensive conversation.

There is no national paving permit. Portland, Oregon shows one shape the rules take: a zoning permit is required for creating a new or enlarged parking area or driveway, or paving a graveled parking area; a building permit is required to move more than ten cubic yards of earth as site development; and a building permit is also required to pour concrete sidewalks, slabs and driveways more than thirty inches above adjacent grade or over any story or basement. Portland attaches a reminder worth carrying into any jurisdiction, which is that all projects must follow zoning rules even when a building permit is not required.

Fairfax County, Virginia draws its line somewhere else entirely. It lists driveways among the projects that do not need a building permit, and then adds the caveat that matters more than the exemption: depending on the size and location of your project, additional approvals may be necessary, and setbacks and other zoning requirements may apply. It also warns that for driveway improvements, water connections, sewer connections or landscaping within the state right-of-way, a permit from the state transportation department may be required. The strip between your property line and the road is very often not yours to pave as you please.

So make one call to your building or planning department before the design is settled, and ask four things: does this need a building or a zoning permit, what are the setbacks from the property lines, is there a cap on how much of the lot may be hard surface, and who controls the section between the sidewalk and the street. Those four answers can change the shape of the driveway, and none of them costs anything to obtain.

Most residential paving is dense-graded hot-mix asphalt, designed to shed water off the surface and away. The alternative is a porous asphalt pavement with a stone reservoir, which the Federal Highway Administration describes as a low impact development technology that provides a pavement surface for parking, walkways, trails and roads while also being designed to manage and treat stormwater runoff, and which FHWA notes is recognized as a best practice by the Environmental Protection Agency and many state agencies.

The cross section is the interesting part, and it inverts the usual instinct. FHWA describes porous asphalt as typically built over an uncompacted subgrade to maximize infiltration through the soil, with a geotextile fabric above the subgrade to prevent fines migrating up into the stone, then a reservoir of uniformly graded clean crushed stone with forty percent voids that temporarily stores water as it soaks away, a thin stabilizing or choker course of smaller single-size stone to pave against, and open-graded asphalt layers on top carrying typically between sixteen and twenty-two percent air voids. FHWA reports that the University of New Hampshire Stormwater Center found a seventy-five percent or greater reduction of deicing salts on this kind of surface.

It is not a default choice, and FHWA is candid about why. The listed limitations include higher initial pavement structure costs, sloped pavements requiring extra design work such as terracing, underground berms and drainage pipes at low points, potential clogging with dirt and organic debris that demands specialized maintenance such as vacuuming, limited use in heavy loading areas where sharp turns are probable, and a caution that porous pavements should not be constructed where there is a high risk of toxic spills. Poorly drained soil or a high water table rules the system out before the conversation starts.

EPA adds two benefits that never appear on a paving bid. Besides reducing the runoff from the rain that falls on them, permeable pavements can help filter out pollutants that contribute to water pollution, and they can reduce the need for road salt. Where your city has stormwater requirements, it is worth asking whether a permeable surface counts toward them before you assume the cheaper pavement is the cheaper project.

In the northern states the ground freezes far deeper than most homeowners picture, and the base under a driveway sits inside that frozen layer. Minnesota's building rules give a sense of the scale: in the absence of a determination by an engineer competent in soil mechanics, the minimum allowable footing depth due to freezing is five feet in the state's Zone I and three and a half feet in Zone II. A driveway is not a footing and is never built that deep, which is precisely why frost governs it. The base has to be built of material that drains, so there is no trapped water in the pavement structure to turn into ice and lift what sits above it.

The hardest moment of the year is not the coldest week but the thaw. The still-frozen ground below holds meltwater in, the layer above softens, and for a few weeks the subgrade carries far less load than it does in August. That is why a delivery truck, a dumpster or a concrete mixer in early spring can leave ruts in a driveway that shrugged off the same weight the previous summer, and why experienced crews would rather rebuild a base once the ground has drained than while it is still saturated.

Hot-mix asphalt has to be compacted while it is still hot, so cold ground and cold air shorten the window in which a crew can place and roll it properly. Across the northern half of the country that bunches paving into the warmer months and books good contractors out well ahead. In the South and Southwest the season runs far longer and the antagonists change: ultraviolet exposure hardening the surface, and a subgrade that shrinks and swells with the moisture in the soil rather than with frost.

Two paving bids usually differ because the contractors are proposing different amounts of excavation and base, not different asphalt. The variables that move the number are the measured area and the thickness the use demands, how much old surface and soil has to come out and be hauled away, the depth and type of the stone base, how much regrading and drainage work the site needs, access for trucks and rollers, edges, curves and transitions at the garage and the street, and whether a permeable system with its stone reservoir and geotextile is being built instead of a conventional one. Ask for the excavation depth and the base specification in writing and the comparison becomes possible.

LokalMatch is where the search starts. You describe the paving job once, including the rough size, what is there now and what will drive on it, and paving contractors covering your area receive that request and get in touch directly. The pros pay for the requests they receive; homeowners use the service at no charge. LokalMatch does not do the paving, does not set or quote prices, and does not vet, rank or recommend any contractor, so confirming licensing, insurance and recent local work you can walk on is still your own job.