Broom-Finished Concrete Driveway

Freshly poured broom-finished concrete driveway running to a two-car garage, taped off while it cures — Broom-Finished Concrete Driveway

Service: Driveway Paving
Material: Poured concrete

What the job involved

Full-width concrete drive poured from the street apron to the garage
Broom finish across the driving surface for wet-weather traction
Control joint run down the centre so shrinkage cracks where we chose

Photographed the day it was placed, which is why the tape is still up. Concrete has to be left alone while it cures — a car driven onto a slab in its first week does damage that never comes out — so the tape stays and the homeowner parks on the street for a few days. That is the whole inconvenience of a concrete driveway, and it happens once.

The line running down the centre is a control joint, not a crack. Concrete shrinks as it cures and the shrinkage has to go somewhere; a joint cut to about a quarter of the slab depth gives it a weak line to follow, so the crack forms inside the joint where nobody ever sees it. A drive this width without one would have cracked on its own terms, diagonally, within the first year.

The broom finish is the texture dragged across the surface while it was still plastic. It is the least glamorous of the concrete finishes and the right one for a driveway on a slope in a climate that ices over — a smooth trowelled slab looks better in a photograph and is treacherous in February.

Recent work