McLean, VA Estate Driveway & 24ft VDOT Apron Upgrade | Fixing Builder Mistakes

The owner of this multi-million dollar estate in McLean, Virginia had a three-car garage, but the original builder choked the entrance with a misaligned, skinny 10-foot apron, and after just one year the builder-grade driveway was spalling. The client originally called hoping to patch the bottom of the driveway and widen the street entrance.

Why a patch was not workable

The elevation dropped off significantly from the existing driveway down to the street. To make slopes match, we would have had to cut half the driveway back to a control joint and force an unnatural grade toward the street, so we advised a full structural tear-out. The house did not sit perfectly square with the street; instead of squaring the new driveway to the road, we squared the concrete directly to the house for a straight-shot exit from the garages, and poured a true triple-wide footprint so all three vehicles can pull in and out without shuffling cars.

The 24-foot entrance

To support the widening, we pulled the VDOT permits to build the entrance at the full 24-foot width, the maximum VDOT's standard private-entrance detail allows without a special exception, and constructed a concrete apron 24 feet wide with sweeping 10-foot radius wings, centered on the three-car garage bay. The entrance was built to the VDOT CG-9D detail. Our standard 4-inch driveway gets about 8 inches of excavation and about 4 inches of compacted #21A crushed stone, with 6x6 welded wire mesh pulled up into the center of the slab during the pour, and we reinforce an apron only where the jurisdiction's detail calls for it. In our experience VDOT reviews commonly take one to two months, and the disturbed ground around the new apron has to be restored and stabilized with established grass before VDOT signs off and releases the surety.