LESLIE: Richard in Alaska has a question about a driveway. What can we help you with?
RICHARD: Well, I want to make my driveway look nice and I was thinking, you know, when they do highway projects they tear up the blacktop and a lot of it is left lying around. Sometimes they recycle it. What I was thinking, if I could – what would I need to do to lay it down. I was thinking of laying it down like tile and putting some sand or gravel in between and make it look, you know, mosaic type.
LESLIE: Yeah, yeah. I think that’s actually a great idea. The one thing that you do need to make sure is that the base that you’re going to use for these chunks of recycled asphalt is compacted properly. You want to make sure that you dig down a couple of inches; get a nice, level surface. Then you want to lay down some aggregate, some chunky rock, and make sure that’s sort of tamped evenly then cover that with sand. And then, you know, rent a tamper from your home center …
RICHARD: Yes.
LESLIE: … and then go ahead and place out those chunks of the recycled asphalt however you like them; however it sort of feels organic and beautiful to you. And then go ahead and fill with sand. You know, the closer that you butt them together so that you’re not really getting a sand grout line because that’s going to – you guys get tremendous amount of weather up there, so you want to make sure that you butt them as close together so that you’re really just filling in the space with sand and then brush the sand over and it should be good.
RICHARD: OK. So I have to make sure I get the preparation and the ground work done right.
LESLIE: That’s the most important part because if you don’t tamp it correctly it’s going to settle over time and everything’s going to shift.
TOM: Richard, good luck with that project. Thanks so much for calling us at 888-MONEY-PIT.
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