Driveway pavers in Salinas CA - a paver driveway that stays level and holds its edges

Most people call us when an old concrete drive has cracked and heaved, or the gravel keeps washing into the street. The price mostly comes down to the size, what has to come out and how much base your ground needs, and the schedule turns on the dig-out, the weather and any permit. I come out, measure and write down the work, the materials and the reason for each, so you can hold it up against other bids, and if the front walk is in the same shape, I can look at walkway construction on the same visit.

Before we dig, we get the underground lines marked so nobody hits a pipe or wire. Then we take out the old surface and soil to the depth your ground calls for, pack the stone base in layers instead of all at once, and set firm edges along the sides before the first paver goes down, because a loose base or a soft edge is what lets a driveway shift. After that we spread a thin, level bed of sand, lay the pattern and make the cuts along the edges, and I check the level and the slope away from the house as we go.

A driveway often isn't the only thing out front that needs work. Where the yard drops off beside the drive, retaining wall construction keeps the base from losing its support at the edge. On older houses we often find a brick porch or front wall with crumbling joints, and we can take care of it with masonry restoration while we're there, since careful mortar work on older brick is what we're best known for.

I won't guess whether your driveway needs a permit. In Salinas, the city's Permit Services office is the point of contact for permit applicants and helps them through the application and the documents it asks for, so that's the place to ask about your project. When a job does need a permit, we handle the application and the inspections and keep you posted on where it stands.

Paver industry guidance calls for a thicker base on soil that stays wet or is weak than on ground that drains well, so your soil helps decide how deep we dig and how much stone goes back in. The Salinas soil series is described as deep and well drained, formed from weathered sandstone and shale, but water soaks into it at a moderately slow pace and rain runs off it at a slow to medium rate. That slow soak matters most if you want permeable pavers, since the water still has to get into the ground underneath. A soil description only goes so far, so I check each lot on site, and we do the same on jobs in Prunedale and Marina, because one yard can drain differently from the next one over.