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.