Concrete Driveways in Goodyear, AZ

Concrete driveways in Goodyear often carry more than the builder planned. A house that came with room for two cars may now hold three, plus a work truck, a utility trailer or a boat. Many of those slabs are also getting old: Point2Homes, working from Census data, puts the median Goodyear home at 2007. We pour new driveways, replace failing ones and add width or side parking, so extra vehicles stop living on gravel or at the curb.

Widening, RV parking or a full replacement

Adding width. A strip goes along one or both sides of the current slab. We either drill and set dowels into the old edge or separate the two with an isolation joint, so the old and new concrete can move without snapping the seam.

Parking for an RV or boat. This usually means a pad beside the garage or back through a side gate. It gets more thickness and more steel than a car driveway, and before we price it we measure the gate opening, the turning path and your HOA's rules on where an RV may sit.

Starting over. When the slab has wide cracks, dropped panels or a crumbling apron, we break it out, haul it off, repair the subgrade and pour new.

The layers below the surface

Most driveway failures start underneath. We excavate old material and soft fill, then compact the subgrade. Some West Valley lots have caliche, a hard calcium carbonate layer that Wikipedia says can range from inches to feet thick and can keep water from draining; where we hit it, we chip down high spots so the base is an even depth. A layer of crushed rock is compacted on top. Four inches of concrete is the norm for passenger vehicles, and HomeGuide calls for 6 inches under heavy vehicles, which is what we suggest for RV, boat and work-truck parking.

Reinforcement, joints and fall

Steel does not stop concrete from cracking, but it holds any crack tightly closed. HomeGuide prices rebar at $1 to $3 a square foot. Control joints decide where cracks will form; a common rule for a 4-inch slab is a joint roughly every 8 to 12 feet, laid out so panels stay close to square. The surface falls toward the street so monsoon water does not run toward the garage door. The apron where your driveway meets the street can fall under right-of-way rules, so we look into that before work begins.

When a driveway is ready to be replaced

• Cracks wider than roughly 1/4 inch, or edges where one side sits higher
• Panels that have sunk and hold puddles after a storm
• An apron broken at the garage or at the curb
• Flaking, exposed stone, or a patchwork of past repairs
• Not enough width for the vehicles in the household

If the damage is confined to a panel or two, replacing just those panels may be all you need.

Surface options under the Arizona sun

Broom texture is the default for good reason: its fine ridges give tires and shoes traction, even wet. Exposed aggregate disguises dust and tire marks. A stamped border, or a fully stamped driveway, adds pattern and color, but HomeGuide's figures put stamped driveways well above plain ones. Light tones stay cooler than dark ones. A sealer applied every couple of years helps keep oil from soaking in and slows fading.

The first month after the pour

In hot months we place driveway concrete soon after sunrise and start curing the moment finishing is done. HomeGuide's timeline is 24 to 48 hours before walking on it, at least 7 days before a car, and 28 to 30 days before heavy vehicles. Keep sprinklers from wetting the new concrete for the first few days, and keep tires off the edges early on, because a young slab is weakest at its edges.

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