Safe Driveway, A Driveway Of Good Quality

Safety is everyone's priority when it comes to constructing residential properties. Homeowners want to ensure that the premises and vicinities of their home are not prone to any kind of danger that would compromise their safety. Driveways are main pathways to residential properties and building them requires safety considerations.

Since driveways are connected with roads and streets, the angle of intersection between the driveway and public access road should be considered in designing and laying out your driveway. The angle of intersection refers to the angle between the centerline of the driveway and the centerline of the road. It is not recommended that this angle is less than 45 degrees. Driveways should intersect the road at 90 degrees.

     Another safety consideration in constructing a driveway is visibility. There should be a clear line of sight so that on-coming traffic is easily detected. For roadways with 20 mph speed limit, the visibility range should be 130 feet and 1,050 feet for roadways that have 60 mph speed limit. To maintain clear visibility, driveways should not be constructed on bends or rises in roads. Cut or trim also those that limit visibility like trees and vegetation that are located along the driveway and road.

             A turnaround is also included in designing and planning a driveway. A turnaround is an arc located between the house building and the driveway or you can use it as the driveway widens out and your vehicle approaches the road. This is very important so you won't drive back into the road. Through a turnaround, you can easily access the road without the need of driving your vehicle backward. The radius of this arc should be 30 degrees but if you have large vehicles like trucks, the recommended turnaround radius is 60 degrees.

             If there is natural drainage or ditch along the road connected to your driveway, culverts are commonly constructed to allow water flow beneath the driveway and drain excess water during a runoff. A culvert is a steel, plastic or reinforced concrete which may have a diameter of 8 inches or several feet. Since ditches and drainages carry water, excess water from them may accumulate along the edges of your driveway or would cause surface runoff. Installing a culvert would prevent such problem.

    

            A concrete driveway that has good quality is one that won't lead you to accidents. Hire a contractor who always prioritizes safety as he works on the project of installing your driveway.

     

Driving Straight To Pleasures Of Country Living Through Properly Installed Rural Driveway

Let us first take a look on distinct features of the environment where rural driveways are located. Building a concrete driveway in the countryside, more often than not, means laying it onto a slope. Hence, the terrain is steep and because of this, homeowners have to deal how to grade their driveways. Grading means determining the width, thickness, and level of the driveway.  Homeowners would also deal with resisting roadside erosions and avoiding marshy areas in installing a rural driveway. Also, they must also consider the flow of storm water

           Living a country life exhilarates the spirit. Indeed, James Thomson, an 18th century poet known for his pastoral poetry described country or rural living in his four-part poem " The Seasons ", with some lines like the following:

Oh knew he but his happiness of men

The happiest he! who far from public rage,

Deep in the vale, with a choice few retir'd

Drinks the pure pleasures of the rural life.

To enjoy the pleasures of country or rural living, one may also consider installing a concrete driveway. However, there are some things to consider in doing this because unlike urban driveways which are located just near the streets, country or rural driveways have wider distances. But that is just one aspect of installing a rural driveway. Here we are going to tackle the primary things to consider in installing a rural driveway.

Given the topographical factors above, we will now go to the specifics of designing and planning a rural driveway. Driveways should be no more than 20 percent slope. This means the driveway should not be inclined at the road higher than 20 percent. This is because steeper driveways would result to a difficult transition of vehicles from the road to the driveway and prone to accidents. To avoid such level, the grade of the driveway should be reduce be cutting the driveway at angle across the slope. With regards to with, rural driveway can be 10 to 12 feet or as wide as 20 feet if it will be traveled by large vehicles.

The route of rural driveways should also be on a high ground and should not pass through boggy or marshy areas of the property because these area soft areas especially when it rains and it would affect the load bearing capacity of driveway. As much as possible, natural drainage patterns are left undisturbed. In case installing the driveway would affect natural drainage patterns, side ditches can be constructed. This would prevent water running through the driveway to lower areas.

     

Through planning and designing your rural driveway with these considerations, you can drive straight to the pleasures of country or rural living because you won't have a driveway full of hassles.

Driveway Sub Base: Why You Should Not Judge A Book By Its Cover

“Don’t judge a book by its cover.” Do you know that this saying doesn't only apply to an individual's personality? In building a concrete driveway, its exterior surface doesn't conclusively define its holistic character, quality and performance; such that, there are driveways that might have no customized logos, engravings or have less designs yet have firm foundation. Likewise, there are driveways with fantastic designs yet very prone to structural damages. Sub base is an important part of concrete driveway and it is on the top of the criteria for judging the performance and quality of your driveway.

A sub base is an interior layer above the subgrade of concrete driveway. The subgrade is the innermost layer underneath your driveway surface and the sub base is laid just above it. Sub base consists of aggregate materials and as a major load-bearing layer for concrete flatworks constructed for vehicular traffic, this is a necessary part. 

Sub base is vital for driveways because the concrete slab can support greater load if the sub base is compacted well and thicker. It also prevents water transporting from groundwater table up to the concrete sleep since it would trap water. Aggregates used to form the layer of sub base can be sand and gravel, or crushed concrete. The mixture of sand and gravel is compacted to interlock their granules and form a sturdy sub base layer. This layer created from these materials however is not that strong as compared to crushed concrete. This is because the granular size in sand and gravel mixture is uniform; as a result, there is less adhesion between the granules.

On the other hand, the granules of crushed concrete are not uniform in size. Crushed concrete is made up cement paste and crushed stones.  Gravel and sand can also be compacted with cement paste and crushed stones. This would produce a combination of large and fine granules that interlock effectively for a stronger driveway sub base

The minimum thickness of sub base for concrete driveways is 4 inches.  Vibratory drum rollers and vibratory plate rollers are used to compact the sub base materials. Drum rollers are preferred for driveways that would support heavy automobiles that require higher compaction density.

In hiring a contractor who will install your concrete driveway, find someone who knows how to apply the saying "Don't judge a book by its cover, '' meaning he will work on all the important parts of your driveway even those that are not seen like the sub base which is very important. All the parts should be given equal attention and quality so you won't just have a driveway beautiful on the surface but ugly in the inside due to a weak foundation.

Fly Ash For Driveways: When A Recycled Waste Product Takes An Extraordinary Route

Did you ever try to visit a home where you can see how waste products are transformed into valuable and elegant pieces of objects? The papers and cardboards we usually throw in trash cans can turn into vases, bowls, sculptures and a lot more as paper mache. Simply, this is recycling and also through such process, a waste product from burning pulverized coal in electric power generating plants known as fly ash has found an extraordinary and purposive route towards our concrete driveways as an admixture, improving the qualities of an ordinary concrete driveway.

There is a high demand for fly ash as a partial cement replacement, which means you don't use it to totally replace cement as a raw material for concrete driveway rather you just mix it with cement, because a driveway is a kind of flooring that gets much load and traffic. Fly ash improves the durability of concrete driveways by making them less permeable. But before we further discuss the advantages of recycling this type of admixture, let us first find out how it is produced.

Fly ash is mostly produced in coal fired electrical generating facilities. As these facilities burn coal, a process called combustion; the mineral impurities in coal such as quartz, clay and shale combine with gases and go out from gas chambers as solidified spherical glassy particles. Fly ash as a by-product of burning coal is a powdery cementitous material. If fly ash is not recycled, it is disposed in landfills. Due to environmental concerns on carbon emissions produced by manufacturing cement, some concrete projects add higher ratio of fly ash in cement mix.

The combination of fly ash and Portland cement in aid of moisture and temperature consideration (40 degrees Fahrenheit), Fly ash reacts to the by-product of Portland cement and water which is calcium hydroxide to form calcium silicates. This decreases the settling time of concrete, making your concrete driveway gain strength. Fly ash decreases the water cement ratio

which is beneficial in improving the durability of concrete since less water is needed to bind its components.

In addition, the presence of fly ash results to a variety of colors from buff to brow. It improves the application of coating and sealer as premature curing is avoided. For example if you apply acrylic cement coating to a prematurely cured concrete driveway, the surface would just peel off. Because the addition of fly ash produces slower curing time, bleed water has more time to come out into the driveway surface.

    

From a waste product in power plants to an advantageous admixture in construction projects, fly ash has taken an extraordinary route in giving homeowners a chance to enjoy the quality of their concrete driveways!

Celebrate White Christmas With A White Concrete Driveway

Christmas is in the air! Are you dreaming of a white Christmas? Literally, we call it a white Christmas if the ground is covered by a snow with a depth of at least 1 inch on the morning of Christmas day. More than that, it refers to celebrating Christmas with our family and friends in a traditional Christmas setting. As the color in the term represents beginning, perfection, lightness and good, it signifies and heralds good vibration and good qualities. If there is a notion of a white Christmas this Christmas time, in decorative concrete industry there is also what we call us white concrete driveway. If a white Christmas means we have spent a good year and enters another positive and exciting year, white concrete driveway serves as a very valuable entrance to our home that gives positive vibration as it welcomes us.

Despite of the wide availability of colors and pigments that are added in installing and resurfacing a concrete driveway, a lot of homeowners are choosing a gleaming, bright and white driveway. A white concrete driveway doesn't use the typical gray cement that has high a level of manganese and iron content. These chemicals give colors to concrete driveway because they produce coloring oxides. The type of cement used for white driveways is called white Portland cement. This is a modified type of cement which is manufactured with low levels of manganese and iron content.

           However, keeping the level of manganese and iron content low in cement is not always a guarantee that you would produce a white concrete driveway. A very white concrete driveway can't be achieved if the aggregates added would still give pigment effects to the concrete. An example of this is regular sand. Regular sand gives tanish color to white cement concrete. To avoid this, light colored sand is used instead. Other white coarse aggregates like limestone can also be used to keep pigmenting effects to concrete minimal.

Anyway, what makes a white concrete driveway special to homeowners? Before we answer this, we must also take note that a driveway made from white cement can still be added with colors. Why? Because the result would be finer and brighter colors. Light-colored concrete driveways have higher light reflectance. This means they are energy-efficient and they contribute to your safety since you would no longer need to put unnecessary streetlights if your driveway has a high albedo. Albedo is a measurement of driveway surface reflectance. It is the ratio of the reflected solar radiation to the total amount that falls on that surface. The albedo of white Portland cement of newly installed white concrete driveway ranges from .70 to .80. This means 70 to 80 percent of the solar radiation that fell on its surface is reflected. An asphalt driveway due to its dark color would only reflect solar radiation within the range of .05 to .10, meaning only 5 to 10 percent is reflected. So, that answers why white concrete driveway is special for a lot of homeowners. 

Do you want a white Christmas? As you enter a new year foreseeing a new phase in your life, try a white concrete driveway that would give you positive vibration while you enter into your residence and celebrate your white Christmas today and the years to come.