Dave™ wrote ...

Juliann,
I recommend you give Sam Randazzo a call at 909-312-1844. Known him for years and he's a quality guy and knows the concrete business well.

doo·hick·ey wrote ...

Here's my take on the subject, gonna be long, but some good key points.

Our driveway is about 1/4 mile to the main road, we may be going with crushed asphalt and rolled to compact flat. Possibly slurry afterwards. A properly done concrete drive will outlast a normal asphalt pour, 2-4 times.

Do you have many heavy trucks that will need access? UPS, Sparkletts, electrical poles or tree trimming a bucket truck would need to be on? 6" thick is expensive vs 5" or gawd forbid 4".

Following the curing directions the contractor gives is a must. Hose down and/or keep covered stuff. Ambient temp for the cure dictates that.

Control saw cuts or tooling (a trowel groove tool) must be done before too long. At 1/4 depth of the slab thickness. This 'controls' the expansion/shrinkage at temps and where the cracks 'could' occur. 8-12 foot apart, opt for middle or less.

Rebar should be used for anything greater than 4" thick, but I use it in even in little pads, not the steel mesh stuff. ~12" cross sections.

I have always just called in the concrete pumper truck and done the labor myself (with a helper or two)

Cap'n Crunch wrote ...

Juliann,
We went through the same decision process a couple of years ago and opted for concrete. I was afraid that concrete might be slippery in snowy conditions but that has not been the case. In fact, concrete makes the snow removal much easier. Asphalt looks more rustic, but to overcome that we used a dark gray stain and are very pleased with the result. The contractor we used was Erickson Construction. Our driveway has a complicated sloping transition to the road so I paid close attention as to how they formed everything. The slab is very thick and they used plenty of steel so I'm not worried about cracking. I'll PM our address so you can check it out.