Strong first impressions start here. So does everything heavy that ever comes to your house.
Driveway Installation Across Georgia
A driveway has to carry a vehicle, which is why it is built differently from every other paved area on a property: deeper underneath, thicker on top, and designed around loads rather than around looks. Everything else about it, the material, the pattern, the edges, sits on that.
Aqualis Pools also takes on projects across Florida, Georgia, and South Carolina.
Built for Strength, Designed for Style
A Driveway Is Not a Patio With Cars On It
The difference between a driveway and a paver patio is not the surface. Both can be the same paver. The difference is what is under it and how thick it is, because a car puts a couple of tons onto four contact patches the size of a hand, and then does it again tomorrow.
Three things follow. The base under a driveway is deeper than the base under a patio, and it is compacted in layers rather than in one go, because that is where the load actually goes. The paving unit itself is thicker for vehicles than for feet, which is a specification rather than a preference. And the edges have to be restrained harder, because a surface that can spread sideways spreads faster with a car turning on it.
Turning is the part people underestimate. A car with power steering turned while stationary grinds at whatever it is standing on, and it does it in the same two or three places every day, which is where a driveway shows its age first. It is worth knowing where those places are before the layout is fixed.
If a Pool Is Coming, the Driveway Goes in Afterwards
Every machine that builds a swimming pool arrives up the driveway. The excavator comes in on a trailer. The spoil from the hole leaves in dump trucks, loaded. The concrete arrives in a truck far heavier than anything that normally visits a house. Then the equipment, the coping, the paving and the fill all come the same way.
Every machine that builds a swimming pool arrives up the driveway. The excavator comes in on a trailer. The spoil from the hole leaves in dump trucks, loaded. The concrete arrives in a truck far heavier than anything that normally visits a house. Then the equipment, the coping, the paving and the fill all come the same way.
So a new driveway laid before the pool is built takes its heaviest loading before it has done a single day of ordinary work. If a new pool construction project is anywhere on the horizon, the driveway is the last thing to build, not the first, and saying so costs us a job this year and saves you the price of a driveway.
If the driveway is already down and the pool is going in anyway, the answer is not to hope. It is to agree the access route before anything arrives, to plan where machines stand and turn rather than letting it happen, and to protect the surface where the load will cross it. Some damage is avoidable at almost no cost if it is discussed in advance and expensive if it is discussed afterwards.
And the other direction: where the pool is being built and the driveway is due for replacement anyway, one mobilization does both, and the machinery is already on site.
The Apron at the Road, and Where the Water Ends Up
A driveway has two ends and both of them are somebody else’s problem until they are yours.
At the road there is the apron, the section between the edge of your property and the street. It is the part almost nobody can name and it usually sits in the public right of way, which means the county rather than the homeowner sets what happens there, and work on it commonly needs a permit and sometimes a specified construction. Where a ditch runs along the road there may be a culvert under it as well, with its own requirements. What applies to your address is set by your local authority, and it is worth establishing before a design is priced rather than after a crew arrives.
At the house end there is water. A driveway covers a large area and sheds a great deal of rain, and the direction it sheds is decided by a fall of an inch or two. Where a drive runs downhill toward a garage, that water has somewhere to go and the somewhere is the garage, unless a channel drain or a change in the fall says otherwise. This is the failure that turns up in the second winter and it is designed out at the start.
Permeable paving is worth asking about in that conversation, because it lets water through the surface instead of moving it somewhere else, and on a lot where the rest of the ground is already covered by hardscaping it can be the difference between managing runoff and just relocating it.
Decisions Made Before It Is Poured or Laid
Material. Concrete is a continuous surface, economical over a large simple area, and it cracks eventually and shows it. Asphalt is cheaper still up front, flexible, and needs resealing on a cycle. Pavers cost more because laying them is the work, and what you buy is a surface that can be lifted and put back, which matters on a driveway because water, gas and power connections run under the front of many properties. The same trade is set out at greater length on our paver patio page.
Shape and turning. Where cars turn, where they park when there are three of them, and whether a vehicle can leave forwards rather than reversing forty feet into a road. This is worth ten minutes with a tape measure, because it is cheap to change on paper and expensive to change once the surface is down.
Cut into a slope. A drive that is levelled into rising ground needs the ground held back, which is a retaining wall and a different budget line. Where that applies it wants pricing at the same time, because the wall usually goes in before the drive can be finished.
Where people walk. A driveway is also where visitors get out of a car, and the route from there to the door is a separate surface with a separate job. Our walkways and paths page covers what that route needs, including lighting, which matters more here than anywhere because people arrive after dark.
What a Driveway Costs
Area first, and then whether this is a replacement or a new surface, because taking out an old driveway and disposing of it is a real line rather than a rounding error.
After that: the material; the base depth the ground and the loads call for; whether the apron is included and whether permitting applies; how much fall has to be created rather than found; whether drainage or a channel drain is needed; whether the ground has to be held back at any edge; and how much cutting the shape requires.
Where a driveway is part of a larger project, pool financing options apply to it in the same way they apply to the pool.
What Our Clients Say
Aqualis Pools is rated 5.0 on Google, from a small number of reviews, and every one of them can be read on the profile.
Driveways Across Georgia
We design and build driveways for homeowners in Lawrenceville, Buford, Loganville, Athens, Auburn and nearby Georgia communities. The full list is on our service areas page, and finished work is in the gallery.
Frequently Asked Questions
Neither is better in general. Paver driveways offer more design flexibility and are easier to repair, because a section can be lifted and relaid with the same units. Concrete is cost-effective over a large simple area and durable, and its weakness is that it is one piece, so when it cracks the repair shows. Asphalt is cheaper again up front and needs resealing on a cycle. The right choice depends on the shape of the drive, the budget and whether anything is ever likely to be dug up underneath it.
Yes, and that is the main difference between the two even when the surface looks identical. A patio carries people; a driveway carries a couple of tons on four contact patches, repeatedly, in the same places. So the base is deeper and compacted in layers, the paving unit is thicker where vehicles run than where feet do, and the edge restraint has to be stronger because a car turning on the spot pushes the surface sideways. If a quote for a driveway matches a quote for a patio of the same area, the difference is underneath and it is worth asking about.
After, wherever it can. Every machine that builds a pool comes up the driveway: the excavator, the dump trucks carrying spoil away, and the concrete truck, which is far heavier than anything that normally visits a house. A driveway built first takes that loading before it has done a day of normal service. If the drive is already down and the pool is going ahead, agree the access route in advance, decide where machines stand and turn, and protect the surface where the load crosses it. And if the drive was due for replacement anyway, doing both while the machinery is on site is cheaper than two mobilizations.
The apron is the section between your property line and the road. It is the part of a driveway almost nobody can name and it commonly sits in the public right of way, which means your local authority rather than you decides what happens there. Work on it often needs a permit and sometimes a specified construction, and where a ditch runs along the road there may be a culvert involved with requirements of its own. What applies at your address is set locally, and it is a question to settle before a design is priced.
Somewhere it was not going before, which is why the fall is designed rather than left to the site. A driveway covers a large area and sheds a great deal of rain, and where a drive runs downhill toward a garage that water arrives at the garage door unless a channel drain or a deliberate change in the fall says otherwise. Permeable paving is the other route, letting water through the surface instead of moving it somewhere else, which is worth asking about on a lot that is already mostly covered.
It depends on the area, on whether an old surface has to come out first, on how much the ground has to be changed, on the material, and on whether apron work and permitting are part of it.
Start Planning Your Driveway
Two answers get this priced. Is there an old surface coming out, or is this new ground? And is a pool, an extension or anything else that arrives on a truck likely in the next couple of years? The first sets most of the number. The second decides whether we should be building this now at all, and we would rather tell you no than pave something twice.
Call (770) 373-8405 with those two answers, or send us a message and we will come back with something specific.