The build standard

Standard

Driveways here are built with AS 3727.1, the residential pavements standard, as the reference. At the crossover the council's own drawing takes over: for Sunshine Coast Council that currently means IPWEA RSD-100 and RSD-101 in urban streets and RS-056 in rural ones, and in Noosa Shire the RS-049, RS-050 and RS-056 set. If anything on this page and a council drawing disagree at the crossover, the drawing wins. Concreting work valued over $3,300 requires a QBCC licence, and the contractor holds one and is insured, QBCC 15620931.

Ground and base

The old surface comes out, soft spots and organic material come out with it, and compacted base material goes in where the ground needs it. On the coast that splits two ways: beachside sand drains fast but must be properly compacted, and hinterland clay moves between wet and dry seasons, which asks more of the base and the joint layout. The base does more for a driveway's life than any extra concrete on top ever will.

Steel

Every driveway carries steel mesh set up on bar chairs before the pour, holding it in the middle third of the slab where reinforcement actually earns its keep. The cheaper method, mesh dropped on the ground and hooked up mid pour, leaves steel wherever the hoe happened to catch it, and you cannot tell the difference until the slab cracks.

Thickness and strength

The floor of the specification is 100mm of 25 MPa concrete, which covers cars and utes. A driveway that will carry a caravan, a boat on a tandem trailer or the odd light truck gets its section and its mesh upgraded to match, priced in the quote from the start instead of hoped about later.

Joints

Control joints are cut on planned lines within a day of the pour, so shrinkage movement happens inside a straight cut instead of across the surface. Isolation joints separate the new slab from the garage slab, house footings and any existing concrete, and the panel layout is drawn before the pour, not improvised behind the saw.

Fall and drainage

Crossfall is designed before the pour: water has to leave the slab on a path that misses the garage and the house. On blocks that tip towards the garage, a grated channel goes into the pour itself and ties into stormwater, rather than being retrofitted after the first flooded doormat. Approach grades get checked against a normal passenger car so nothing scrapes at the street.

Crossovers

From your boundary to the road the council's drawing is the specification. Both councils here run the same two tier logic: tick every box on the checklist and the crossover is self assessed, no permit, no fee; miss a box and the council's written sign off has to arrive before the saw does. Any application fee belongs to the council and sits outside the quoted price, itemised so you can see it.

Finish and cure

The surface is whichever finish your quote names: broom dragged for grip, oxide colour through the full slab depth, or exposed aggregate washed back and sealed. The timetable afterwards is not negotiable with the weather or with anyone else: walk on it from the next day, park a car after a week, keep trucks away for a month while the concrete finishes gaining strength, and seal once the surface has settled down.

Using this page

A driveway quote that undercuts this site by a wide margin has found its saving somewhere in this list, usually under the slab where nobody can check. Ask any quote to put its base depth, mesh grade and slab thickness in writing, hold them against this page, and the price difference will explain itself. Then run your numbers through the pricing page and the calculator.