If you’re fixing up your house, you probably aren’t thinking about your driveway. You may notice that your roof has seen better days. You might want to replace your windows or the furnace in the basement, or maybe you’re dreaming of a kitchen renovation or adding a deck to the backyard.
In fact, most days and nights, you probably don’t notice your driveway. Unless, of course, your driveway is showing its age, with weeds poking up through and cracks spread across it. Then you may hate your driveway and care very much to take one of the most boring home repair projects.
After all, driveways do serve a purpose. You can’t dribble a basketball, ride a bike or roller skate on a driveway if it’s not there.
If you need to replace or repair your driveway, here are the answers to a few key questions.
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How Can You Tell if Your Driveway Needs Repairing or Replacing?
“It’s pretty easy to spot if and when your driveway needs to be replaced or repaired,” says Joe Raboine, the Atlanta-based vice president of design at Oldcastle APG, a provider of outdoor living solutions. Raboine leads the design team for Belgard Pavers & Hardscapes, a brand of pavers found in some higher-end driveways.
Raboine suggests looking for the usual suspects, including cracks, potholes and loose or crumbling edges along your driveway. If you’re embarrassed by your driveway, it probably needs fixing up.
Drainage issues can also be a concern with driveways, says Joe Kauffman, regional vice president at System Pavers in Austin, an outdoor living company that does backyard renovations and installs pavers for driveways, patios, walkways and pool decks.
“If water pools on the surface, it can lead to erosion and cause damage over time,” Kauffman says. “This can undermine your driveway’s foundation and eventually cause potholes or portions of your driveway to collapse.”
Trees can also cause a problem, he adds, with roots pushing up and through the surface of a driveway.
Bottom line: If driving on your driveway feels like you’re on an obstacle course, or if you fear damaging your car in a pothole, it’s well past time to get your driveway repaired or replaced.
“Although you can ignore a crumbling, uneven driveway for a while, it won’t magically improve or heal itself,” Kauffman says. “Eventually, all those cracks can lead to further structural damage and costlier repairs.”
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How Much Should I Budget for a Driveway?
It’s cheaper to repair a driveway than replace it. Repair costs vary depending on what type of driveway you have and how long it is. To give a ballpark idea, to repair an asphalt driveway, the home improvement site Angi suggests you should budget between $300 and $4,700, depending on the type and extent of the repairs needed. Another home improvement site, Today’s Homeowner suggests budgeting $175 to $3,600 for a concrete driveway repair job.
But replacing a driveway — that gets expensive. According to Angi, full replacement of an asphalt driveway could cost as much as $10,000. If you’re going with something more high-end, like paving stones, HomeGuide.com suggests you may want to budget between $15,000 and $30,000.
“Unfortunately, you can’t really cut costs when it comes to replacement,” Kauffman says. “No matter what type of driveway you’re replacing, a homeowner is going to incur three major expenses.”
Those three major expenses are demolition and removal of the old hardscape, material cost and labor, Kauffman says.
Because replacing a driveway can be a major expense, financing can be an issue. Kauffman says that homeowners often take out a personal loan or a home equity loan, or perhaps a loan from the company doing the work.
And if you’re wondering, gravel is the cheapest driveway material you can use, according to Raboine. “But it’s not ideal,” he says. Gravel isn’t necessarily recommended as it requires regular maintenance, cleaning and replacement.
On average, according to Angi, expect to spend $1,500 to put gravel on your driveway, but the final cost depends on numerous factors, including whether you hire someone or try to DIY it.
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Will a New Driveway Add to My Home’s Value?
“Your driveway is essentially the red-carpet welcome to your home,” Kauffman says. “If it’s cracked, crumbling, discolored or looks neglected, it can decrease your home’s curb appeal substantially. This may not seem like a big deal but can add up to thousands of dollars in lost profit if you want to put your home on the market someday.”
Companies that make and install driveways may have a point. As an experiment, Kerry Sherin, an Austin, Texas-based spokesperson for Ownerly.com, a home valuation website, went through over 200,000 properties on the site and found that the median price for a home with an asphalt driveway is $456,200, while the median price for a home with a driveway made of paver brick or brick is a little over $1 million. The most expensive homes, at least on Ownerly.com, have driveways made of crushed shell, with a median price of $1.6 million.
Meanwhile, homes on Ownerly with concrete driveways have a median price of $394,900, and $345,000 for gravel. If you have a dirt driveway, the median price is $269,000, Sherin says.
Of course, it doesn’t mean that if you put in the most expensive driveway, your home will suddenly be worth a million dollars. But it does suggest some correlation with home prices and their driveways.
“High-end materials like shell, brick or paver brick are associated with luxury and exclusivity, often contributing to higher property values,” Sherin says. “On the other hand, more utilitarian materials like dirt or gravel, while practical in certain settings, might be perceived as less desirable in upscale housing markets.”
Even if it doesn’t lower the value of your home, dirt or gravel could potentially reduce your property’s overall appeal, Sherin says. “A driveway often serves as one of the first impressions of a property,” she adds.
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What To Know About Fixing Your Driveway originally appeared on usnews.com
