[MarcusE]

Greetings all,

Replacing the broken, stained concrete of our driveway with pavers and I'm looking for some advice on how to achieve the proper grade/pitch for the sub base. The finished height at the house will be lower than the height at the sidewalk (about 8" over 15') and I'd like to try to slope slightly away from the house for the first half of the driveway, then back up to the sidewalk.

In addition to that, the right side is bounded by our neighbors driveway and we probably need to meet that as well with the pavers, making for a several different pitches coming together. The current concrete accomplishes this, but was installed poorly and has long ago broken.

Any advice on how to best do this? I've got a couple of pros coming to take a look at it, but I'd love to learn the "how"s myself, if only to be better educated when I talk to them.

We're considering using permeable Turfstone as well -- I imagine this might allow us to worry less about the slope toward the house, but we still have to meet the neighbor's drive...

Thanks for any and all advice.

[Stonehenge]

How to set the appropriate pitch/slope for the base is pretty straightfoward, but for some sites it can be trickier than others. Sometimes a drain is needed, or some complicated slope schemes. But shooting it with lasers and then executing according to the laser measurements is really all there is to it.

Permeables are nice, but if this is for your drive, look into some of the newer permeable pavers, because they are far nicer than the turfstone from a decade or so ago.

[MarcusE]

Thanks for the reply -- I'll look into some other pavers. Do you have any specific ones you like? The Uni Ecostone is the other one I've seen a lot -- looks a lot more like a traditional paver. Not as much open space, but the driveway isn't all that large to begin with.