Concrete Driveways in St. Louis, MO

Concrete driveways in St. Louis come in two shapes. Suburban homes usually have a drive from the street to an attached garage. Many city homes instead park off a rear alley, on a pad beside a detached garage or in a short drive cut through the back yard. Either way the slab takes the same abuse: tires turning in place, snow shovels, salt tracked in from the street and water that freezes and thaws through a winter that averages a 24-degree low and a 40-degree high in January, per Wikipedia's climate table.

Signs a driveway is done

• Large areas of flaking or pitting where the surface paste is gone
• Cracks with one side higher than the other
• A section by the garage or alley that has sunk and holds water
• Water running toward the house or garage instead of away from it
• Crumbling edges, or a drive too narrow for the cars you own now

One sunken panel on an otherwise sound driveway can often be lifted, and a level slab with light scaling can sometimes be resurfaced. When settling, cracks and scaling all show up together, replacement is usually the better spend.

Asphalt to concrete

A lot of St. Louis homeowners ask us to pull out an old asphalt drive and replace it with concrete. HomeGuide's driveway guide lists concrete at about $6 to $14 or more per square foot against $5 to $12 for asphalt, and gives concrete a 30 to 40 year life against 15 to 30 for asphalt. Concrete also does not need the regular sealcoating asphalt does, though it does benefit from a sealer every few years. We remove the asphalt and its old base, check the soil under it and build a new stone base before forming.

Built from the ground up

We break out and haul away the old surface, dig out soft or organic soil, and replace it with crushed stone compacted in layers. Forms are set so the finished drive drains away from the garage and the house. HomeGuide calls for at least 4 inches of concrete for cars and 5 to 6 inches for RVs or heavy vehicles, with thicker edges of 6 to 8 inches. Where a work truck or a trailer parks, we thicken the slab. Rebar or wire mesh holds cracks tight, and joints are cut or tooled on a grid planned before the pour.

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Where the driveway meets the public sidewalk

On many city lots the driveway crosses the public sidewalk on its way to the street. Owners in the City of St. Louis are responsible for keeping that sidewalk in repair, and the Street Department requires a sidewalk permit, listed at $25 for residential property, to reconstruct it at your own expense. The permit page asks for applications at least a week ahead and limits blocking the sidewalk or curb lane to weekdays between 9 a.m. and 3 p.m. If your home is in a City Historic District, the Cultural Resources Office also reviews on-premise drives. We check both before your driveway goes on the calendar.

Finishes that work on a driveway

• Broom finish: a fine texture that gives grip in rain and slush, and the usual choice.
• Exposed aggregate: the surface paste is washed off to show the stone, which hides tire marks.
• Stamped or colored borders: a patterned band along the edges with plain lanes in the middle.
• We avoid a smooth trowel finish on sloped drives because it gets slick when wet or icy.

The first year

HomeGuide's guide says to stay off with cars for at least 7 days and keep heavy vehicles off for the 28 to 30 day full cure, then wait about the same before the first sealer coat and reseal every 2 to 3 years. Use sand rather than salt the first winter, and avoid de-icers with ammonium nitrate or ammonium sulfate later on. Keep downspouts discharging away from the slab.