terryw67•1d agoMost Upvoted

Vent: lost a whole driveway pour last month because of bad prep

Up in Bangor, Maine back in early October, I had a crew of five ready to go on a 40-yard residential driveway. The homeowner had already cleared the area, or so I thought. Three hours in, we hit a soft spot where old tree roots had rotted out the subgrade underneath the gravel. Had to tear out a 12-foot section and redo it two days later. Has anyone else dealt with hidden soft spots that didn't show up until the mud was down?

2 comments

2 Comments

jana_hart181d ago

My crew in Bangor has done over 60 pours this season alone and I still think a lot of this comes down to bad luck, not bad prep. That hidden spring theagibson found sounds rough, but most of us can't probe every single inch of a 40-yard site without wasting a whole day. I've had homeowners swear their ground was solid, then I hit a soft spot anyway, and you know what? I just budget an extra 2 yards of concrete for waste like that. If you're trying to catch every hidden root or spring, you'll never get anything done on time or on budget. Sometimes you gotta just pour and fix it later, it's faster in the long run.

theagibson1d ago

Last summer I would have told you good prep catches everything, but then I had to rip out a 15-foot section of a driveway in Concord when a hidden spring turned the gravel to soup. The homeowner swore he'd graded it right, but three inches of mud under the stone told a different story. Now I walk the whole site with a probe rod no matter what anyone says.