[Lawn Lad]

The picture shows the type of cobblestone driveway that we need to patch and repair. There is an area that has heaved, areas that are sunken, some bricks are sunken/cracked or deteriorated all together. I believe the cobblestone is a sandstone based on the way that some pieces have fractured or deteriorated.

Last year we buried 20' of 3.0" schedule 40 PVC under a section of the drive to run an irrigation pipe and wire through this spring. When we dug this area we found a green concrete/mortar bed that the cobbles were set in. The cobbles are of varying thicknesses. We reinstalled the cobbles on a bed of compacted limestone and then swept #10 screening in the joints. The trench area has sunken slightly, noticeable to the eye.

I'm wondering what we need to do in different situations:

Sunken cobbles: can we extricate and simply raise and reset? If so, with what material? Would limestone work?

Pot holes: Much like one sunken cobble, there are areas where five or six are lower and have created areas that need to be raised.

Heaved area: We were going to excavate and install a new base and relay about 120 sq ft in this one area. What type of base? Wet mix or dry lay?

Adding stones to the edge of the drive: In a couple of areas around the circular drive people are driving onto the lawn (creeping bent - looks better later into spring). We were going to widen the drive by 18" to 24" along two stretches. We'll obviously excavate back, but what base to install new stones on? Similar I'm sure to the heaved area above.

Thanks for input. This driveway in total is over 20,000 sq ft and we'd like not to make a monumental project out of repairing/maintaining it. But we only want to do our repairs once. There is an area along the length of the drive where wheel ruts are beginning to form, so this may be a project for future years.

[Stonehenge]

That's a huge project!

Re: the green concrete - is someone else also doing repairs on this thing?

I'm not feeling good about partial repairs because they so often seem to appear different from the rest - but this one is already pretty beat up.

Hmmm....

If the whole drive is sitting on a concrete slab (which seems hard to believe looking at the shape of it in the pic), you might cut out the sunken sections, fill with compacted stone, then lay a tight geogrid over it, attaching it to all sides where it meets the slab (pulling back more cobbles than the repair area, then relaying over the grid, with mortar if needed to return to previous condition).

Just repairing as you did for the sched 40, but prepping to a greater depth to prevent settling like around that pipe.

I bet this drive is part of a grand old house. But this looks like a problem project to me. How do you define what needs repair and what doesn't? Will they be happy with it when you've repaired the "really terrible" sections but left the "aweful", "bad" and "unsightly" sections alone?

I know you know what you're doing - this just looks like one of those things where I wouldn't be happy with the end result unless it was a total tear-out and re-do. I think trying to prep or compact the areas beyond the exact area you'll be repairing will be a big help in the future durability of this repair.

That's my $.02, anyway.

[HardDaysKnight]

Jeff is so right on this one. I wouldn't touch it unless
it was a complete rip-out and done from scratch.
Re-cycle what you can and charge accordingly or
don't touch it. The whole thing is a mess.
If you and the client decide to repair certain areas,
I would suggest drawing them out in chalk and take
pics and get a signature that that is the agreed sections.
Take pics of the finish work to show you complied.
You will go crazy repairing it instead of walking away
if they don't wan't to do the complete renovation.
Best of luck on this one....Johnny

[dan deutekom]

This job is a rip out and start from scratch. You could save the good stone but in my experience it is just as easy and cheap to get new stone. By the time the labour is tallied up to sort the good from the bad stone, clean it so that it relays well and try to get old stone to match with new stone it just makes sense to start fresh.

No one is happy when just doing repairs on a job like this.