New build: Asphalt v. paver driveway
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Anonymous
It's really easy to use a snowblower - you just have to not care about flinging the gravel all around. |
Anonymous
| I'm about to have my asphalt driveway torn out because I despise it, so I would go with pavers. |
Anonymous
PP you’re responding to. I live in Minnesota and there are many farms up here with it. It doesn’t plow as cleanly and some of the rocks end up shoved over the side. It just doesn’t seem like a practical application here. Pretty, yes. |
Anonymous
| Concrete. This isn’t a hard decision. |
Anonymous
| We did concrete. I regret not doing stamped concrete - looks so much better. |
Anonymous
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I'm the PP who prefers asphalt to natural concrete. Gravel is one of the cheapest paving materials, so it isn't clear why it's suitable for an expensive house in an area where it isn't commonly used.
Something like stamped concrete, or colored concrete, maybe combined with exposed aggregate, could be attractive and in keeping with the premium nature of the house. Natural concrete slab, on the other hand, is plenty expensive but at the same time stark and minimal. |
Anonymous
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We have a $2.5M house with an asphalt driveway.
Great for my kids, as someone mentioned. Black color means that snow/ice melt faster on it which I like. I hate weeds and uneven paver stones so I would go asphalt all the way. And btw— we bought the house like this, so the asphalt wasn’t my choice, didn’t factor into our purchase decision, but I like jt |
Anonymous
| One consideration if your lot isn’t huge is whether you think you will ever want to expand the house or add a patio, porch, etc. We thought about adding a screened in porch to our house but found that with our non permeable driveway and large house we were up against the county limit on non permeable surfaces for our property. We ended up going with a permeable surface patio. If our driveway were permeable we would have had enough wiggle room for the screened in porch. |
Anonymous
You can’t plow pavers, which is why I would never use them. |
Anonymous
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Porous pavement requires special maintenance or it'll lose its porousness:
https://www.montgomerycountymd.gov/DEP/Resources/Files/PostersPamphlets/Porous-Pavement-Maintenance.pdf |
Anonymous
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We had pavers at our last house and hated them. They looked nice, and we didn’t have any issues with weeds, but they were very slippery, and not great for shoveling.
Our first house had a concrete pad that had seen better days. Most of the concrete pads in this area seen to be cracked or settled at weird angles. Unpopular opinion, but I’m more or partial to asphalt. Maybe it’s because that’s what everyone had where I grew up. Yes, it cracks, but it seems easier to rip out and repave than concrete. |
Anonymous
This thread is interesting to read so many opinions. Personally I think the stamped concrete looks so cheap and cheesy. But I’m one of the pro-asphalt posters which is getting lots of hate on this thread! |
Anonymous
I agree. I think a stamped concrete driveway looks worse than asphalt. |
Anonymous
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I personally think a $2.5-3 m dollar house deserves better than asphalt. Asphalt looks ok when it is first installed, but it will fade and crack over time, and it's going to be the first thing people see when they arrive at your house.
I do think people skimp on hardscape and landscape because it comes at the end, and they're exhausted with spending by the time they get there, but it so very important to make a good first impression. I get it, because we're at the end of a long renovation, and we're at the landscape stage and I'm having to keep reminding myself that it's really just a fraction of what we've already spent. TBH, I think people think pea gravel looks better, even though it's cheaper, because it's something that's commonly used in the driveways of large estates, so it has that "country estate" feel. One option that hasn't been mentioned here is exposed aggregate. It's basically concrete with pea gravel embedded, so it looks better than concrete, but has the same durability. Our driveway is aggregate with brick borders, and it looks nice. We also had some parking areas installed that are permeable pavers with grass squares, and they look great. People walking by constantly stop to ask who installed them. They've been less maintenance than I thought they would be. We needed to water them when the grass was getting established, but now we just throw some seed down every now and then, and they stay pretty lush. If they're installed properly, they won't be cheaper than regular pavers, though. Putting in the grass plugs was VERY labor intensive. If pavers are getting a lot of weeds and not lying flat, it's because they weren't properly installed. It's why pavers can be expensive (and also why bids can vary quite a bit). To do it properly, they really should dig down a foot or more and put down gravel, and then sand, and then install the pavers. |
Anonymous
Rarely We have pea gravel and hours is heated. Can’t tell you last time we used heater. |