Béton Mobile - Construction of a concrete driveway, stairs patio, and sidewalk

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Construction of a sidewalk, a driveway, a patio, or stairs is an interesting landscaping project. This sheet explains how to go about it, step by step, and is especially written for beginners. Béton Mobile Sirosol can help you with some practical tips.

The are many common points between construction methods for sidewalks, driveways, patios, and stairs. We provide the general construction methods below adding special comments as needed. There may be local by-laws governing this type of construction; this is something you will have to check in the local building code, or with the building permits department of your municipality. Sidewalks, driveways, patios, and stairs all require the same quality of concrete, and the same finishing textures are usually used on all the surfaces.

Information about concrete

Fig. 1. Cracking in concrete sidewalks, driveways, and patios should be controlled by means of well planned joints.

Figure 1 illustrates the layout of various types of joints that enable you to obtain fine-looking surfaces with no cracks.Figures 2, 3 and 4 show the details of these joints. Contraction joints make it possible to control cracking. Use grooving tools on fresh concrete, to score the slab to one quarter of its depth. If it is necessary to make joints in hardened concrete, you will have to use a saw. Isolation joints are used between two different types of constructions, while construction joints are used in places where the concrete placement was interrupted; if these joints are coated with a release agent, like oil, they will play the role of contraction joints.

Figure 5 shows a series of photos taken during the construction of a patio sidewalk, but that apply just as well to the construction of a driveway.

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