Concrete driveway quotes

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duckDecoy

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#3004683 2-Dec-2022 14:44

Inphinity:

duckDecoy:

This may or may not apply to your drive but I will mention it.

We have a 'dip' in our drive right before the garage. Apparently they have a template thingy that they sort of walk down the compacted pre poured drive area to make sure cars can drive down it without bottoming out or scraping bumpers. It is sort of a long stick with blocks representing wheels and you move it down the drive and make sure the stick never scrapes on the ground anywhere. They didn't use it on our drive when they laid it, as we later discovered.

Only about 10% of cars can get into our garage. They either have to be jacked up 4wd or SUV style cars, or quite compact. All the rest scrape or ram their bumpers into the ground before the car makes it into the garage. Neither of our cars can make it into the garage.

Make sure they check this if you think it is relevant.

Surely the driveway not being suitable for cars to use to access the garage, which is likely the intended purpose, makes it a CGA issue as being unfit for purpose - assuming a residential engagement with a driveway contractor?

Fingers pointed every which way afterwards. Our main problem was our existing cars were compact so we didn't notice the problem until about 5 years later when started a family and got new cars. By then every finger pointed everywhere else and then one of them wound up and so on and so on.

timmmay

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#3004693 2-Dec-2022 15:00

johno1234:

How about running a 100mm conduit under the centre of driveway and pushing the water main through it, and a separate cable conduit for the fibre? Is that overdoing it?

The driveway is 45m long so will need a lot of it.

I would, though possibly larger / more pipes. It might seem expensive now, but wait until you have to pull the driveway up to fix a leak and have to pay for the whole thing again.

johno1234

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#3004699 2-Dec-2022 15:14

timmmay:

johno1234:

How about running a 100mm conduit under the centre of driveway and pushing the water main through it, and a separate cable conduit for the fibre? Is that overdoing it?

The driveway is 45m long so will need a lot of it.

I would, though possibly larger / more pipes. It might seem expensive now, but wait until you have to pull the driveway up to fix a leak and have to pay for the whole thing again.

Yep. The driveway is munted because the ancient metal watermain started leaking under it at some point and that eroded and undermined it - causing it to slump. When we purchased the property the first water bill was $800!!!

We currently have a temporary blue MDPE 25mm pipe running up the boundary on the surface. The whole concrete project is nearly $40k so it won't be a significant increase to install some conduits.

Jase2985

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#3004982 3-Dec-2022 09:57

run separate conduit for different services, run it as close to the edge of the drive as possible to its easy to get to should you need to get to it in the future.

I ran my incoming 25mm water pipe in a 32mm flexible pipe as the conduit, that way it can just be pulled out if it needs replaced. same for fibre and power.

tweake

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#3005091 3-Dec-2022 12:40

msukiwi:

Watch out for the clause of "standard conditions".

We got three quotes - Only one was to OUR specification!

We specified MPA, depth and mesh reinforcing.

One had no reinforcing and 75mm. The other was "fiber" reinforcing and 75mm!

to add to that, be careful on how they do it.

we had one of the work sheds where i'm told they "forgot their some of their tools", so they added more water to the mix to make it more spreadable. which of course means it now has shrinkage cracks all through it.

fiber is not to bad (like the steel it reduces cracking) but it requires a lot of traffic over it to wear off the top fibers.

Benoire

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#3005328 3-Dec-2022 19:08

Polymer based fibres are a fantastic product for ground bearing slabs. Cheap to add, no issues of working around steel and therefore no issues with air voids as a result of poor vibration. If you float of the mix then it will no show but if you used it for exposed concrete there is the chance of some fibres popping out. The most wonderful thing about fibre is that should you need to cut in to the surface then you just need to scabble the edges of the exposed concrete and place some new concrete with fibre and it will bond as if it wasn't cut.

As someone who leads the writing of engineering and design standards for a civil engineering organisation I am transitiioning is away from steel mesh reinforcement to fibre.

steve2222

499 posts

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#3005808 5-Dec-2022 08:21

Jase2985:

run separate conduit for different services, run it as close to the edge of the drive as possible to its easy to get to should you need to get to it in the future.

I ran my incoming 25mm water pipe in a 32mm flexible pipe as the conduit, that way it can just be pulled out if it needs replaced. same for fibre and power.

I am in the same situation as one of the above posts where the concrete driveway will need to take up the full width of the legal title for a 30 m long driveway, so all service have to go under the driveway.

I to thought it logical to run conduit for everything - even water, so if water main leaks the pipe can be pulled out and a new one pushed through the conduit without cutting the driveway.

We have nearly a full suite of service needing to be put in conduit ie power, fibre, gas and incoming a water.

Question: is there a general NZ wide standard (we are in Auckland) that specifies what depth and how far apart the conduits for the various services need to be: Eg I am assuming gas and power (even in seperate conduit) cannot be placed in the same trench at the same depth.

Also is there an agreed specification for the the diamter of the conduit for the different service eg do the power lines companies require 100mm, say, diameter conduit to put the power cable through.

Reason I ask this is so I am pre-armed, when asking driveway contractors to quote, that they are quoting to put in conduits that meet the various requiremnets/specifications - if any.

Cheers

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Jase2985

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#3006027 5-Dec-2022 15:07

my power is in a 32mm orange conduit burred 600mm deep, and has a plastic danger power tracer 100mm above it. im not sure if the depth changes because there is mechanical protection (ie a drive way) above it. my fiber is in a separate conduit in the same trench but shallower in chorus green 20mm conduit.

here is what chorus says "The lead-in pipe should be a minimum of 20mm internal diameter and should be telecommunications green in colour which can be purchased from electrical wholesalers."
https://www.chorus.co.nz/themes/custom/chorus_consumer/components/assets/docs/property-development/Lead-ins-and-trenching-brochure.pdf

johno1234

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#3006045 5-Dec-2022 16:19

Jase2985:

my power is in a 32mm orange conduit burred 600mm deep, and has a plastic danger power tracer 100mm above it. im not sure if the depth changes because there is mechanical protection (ie a drive way) above it. my fiber is in a separate conduit in the same trench but shallower in chorus green 20mm conduit.

here is what chorus says "The lead-in pipe should be a minimum of 20mm internal diameter and should be telecommunications green in colour which can be purchased from electrical wholesalers."
https://www.chorus.co.nz/themes/custom/chorus_consumer/components/assets/docs/property-development/Lead-ins-and-trenching-brochure.pdf

That's handy.

From that link:

• The trench depth should be 450mm below the finished ground level.
Where the lead-in pipe is under permanent material like a concrete
driveway, you can reduce the depth to 300mm
• If power is in the same trench, this should be laid approximately 100-
150mm deeper than our Chorus network. Protection material such
as gravel can be used between the two networks

mattwnz

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#3007793 9-Dec-2022 15:54

I see a lot of drives where the corner with the road is cracked, where a truck has driven over it. I do wonder if they should be thicker at edges / corners. Getting concrete driveways done in NZ is like the wild west. That is if you can actually get someone to do the work. The quotes can vary significantly. I know someone who had quotes ranging between 20k and over 50k for the same driveway job. I think some are giving high quotes when they don't need the work, so it is just a punt.

Jase2985

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#3007929 9-Dec-2022 21:15

mattwnz:

I see a lot of drives where the corner with the road is cracked, where a truck has driven over it. I do wonder if they should be thicker at edges / corners. Getting concrete driveways done in NZ is like the wild west. That is if you can actually get someone to do the work. The quotes can vary significantly. I know someone who had quotes ranging between 20k and over 50k for the same driveway job. I think some are giving high quotes when they don't need the work, so it is just a punt.

same job but i bet it would be a different product with some skimping on depth/rebar etc

elpenguino

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#3007955 10-Dec-2022 00:12

mattwnz:

I see a lot of drives where the corner with the road is cracked, where a truck has driven over it. I do wonder if they should be thicker at edges / corners. Getting concrete driveways done in NZ is like the wild west. That is if you can actually get someone to do the work. The quotes can vary significantly. I know someone who had quotes ranging between 20k and over 50k for the same driveway job. I think some are giving high quotes when they don't need the work, so it is just a punt.

It's the support of the concrete , not the concrete, stronger in compression, not tension etc etc !

Most of the posters in this thread are just like chimpanzees on MDMA, full of feelings of bonhomie, joy, and optimism. Fred99 8/4/21

johno1234

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#3007964 10-Dec-2022 06:46

This. Not properly compacting the basecourse to the edges, not setting out mesh, or not putting saw cuts in the right place guarantees cracks.

johno1234

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#3008175 10-Dec-2022 17:01

Chorus finally came back with a quote to put the fibre up a supplied duct and reconnect - $500 + GST.

I'll put the duct under the driveway and just bury the existing cable for now. If it fails then I'll call Chorus back to replace it in the duct.

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