Paver Driveways

A paver driveway, properly installed, will last much longer than either asphalt or concrete. We install paver driveways on a full 12″ of compacted base material, ensuring that the driveway will never move.

The pavers, either clay or concrete, are oven-cured to ~10,000 PSI (three times the strength of poured concrete) and can withstand much more pressure than a car or truck would ever put on them. So both the base and the surface are solid and durable. Once a paver driveway is installed, it requires no further technical maintenance.

Another great benefit to pavers is that any paver or group of pavers can always be removed and replaced, if necessary. In a disaster where you spill a large amount of something on your paver driveway and can’t clean it off, it’s actually quick and easy to remove and replace the damaged pavers. Clay pavers often have the same texture on the top and bottom, so they can simply be removed, turned upside-down, and replaced.

Pavers have been used for thousands of years in Europe and around the world to pave roads. They are still widely used today. Hedberg Landscape Supply has pavers installed where 15-ton dump trucks drive over them every day. You can use your snowblower or have a snowplow company plow a paver driveway in the winter. They won’t hurt it.

$12-18/Square Foot (less if no tear-out)

Concrete is totally inflexible. It can not bend with the freeze/thaw cycle, so every winter it develops new cracks. It is installed on little (if any) compacted base material, so it received the full brunt of the frost every year.

The surface of poured concrete is durable, but if you spill something uncleanable, you are stuck with it. There’s no possible way to remove and replace a chunk without leaving a very obvious patch.

Stamped concrete has the same drawbacks as regular concrete, and is more expensive than pavers. Stamped concrete looks good until the cracking starts, and no amount of rebar will stop it. Concrete is too inflexible to stand our winters.

Concrete pricing has risen in the last 5 years, due to the rising cost of concrete and the trucking charges to haul it. Nowadays, concrete slabs and driveways are in the $9.00-15.00/SF range. This also depends on the quality of installation, how much rebar they use, how thick the slab will be, etc. We got four bids for a 1500 SF driveway in Southwest Minneapolis last year, and none were lower than $13.00/SF That was without tearout! Stamped concrete is $14.00-18.00/SF

Asphalt is a cheap product, designed to be inexpensive to install and repair. Asphalt is installed on 4-6″ of compacted base material, which prevents movement. But it’s not really enough base to be totally stable. Asphalt is soft and easily damaged, particularly during summer heat waves. It needs cracks and holes filled and to be resealed every couple of years to keep looking nice. Oil leaks can eat through asphalt, surprisingly.

You save money up-front on the installation of an asphalt driveway, but if you want it to stay looking nice, you have to spend money on it most every year. I personally think that asphalt looks pretty nice when it’s new, but give it 5 years of patching and sealcoating, and suddenly the paver driveway next door looks about 100 times better.

The price range for asphalt is $5.00-9.00/SF, depending on the experience of the contractor, the quality of asphalt they’re using, and size of the job.