Paving stones driveway base Wrong or Right

kingcire

I have a driveway and was wondering if this would be a suitable way to get a sturdy paver stone foundation. I know it’s not the preferred or right way to do it, but was hoping it would be close in durability. I live in Louisiana so the original driveway slab has sunken about a foot or so below the house and carport. So I ordered some tough dirt/clay/rock mixture to fill all around the house an over the old driveway. I just found out clayish dirt is bad to use, but i do not have the recources to remove the dirt and put down a lime stone base. I was hopeing putting two nonwoven geotextile fabrics over the clay would make the clay stay dry and hard and make a decent base for the paving stones.

Let me know if this is a bad idea and list some reasons why this would fail or if you think this had a good chance at lasting.

concretemasonry

Go to the Interlocking Concrete Pving institute site (icpa.org) for installation and material specs. Make sure you are considering interlocking concrete pavers instead of the unknown "steeping stones" that have dimension greater than 11" or so.

You certainly have soil problems in LA after seeing what I did for 6 months after Katrina. It was not unusual to run into a home (slab on piling) where for several years before the storm they sent the kid under the slab to run the cable for TV. Everything there seems to go down in time.

You are right - clay is rarely a good base even if it looks good and seems to "pack" nice.

A concrete driveway will have the same settlement problems, but cannot be picked up and reset because of the unstable sub-base.

Dick