McLean VA VDOT Apron & Driveway Expansion | Fairfax County Concrete Contractor

At this McLean, Virginia estate the previous contractor had installed a paver driveway but left the VDOT apron and sidewalk elevations alone. We expanded the single-wide apron to a double-wide entrance and brought a non-compliant curb and gutter back into code, syncing the street, the new apron and the existing paver driveway. We also reset the homeowner's existing pavers, installed by the earlier contractor, and corrected the grade so the driveway meets the new apron; that paver work was only needed because the driveway and the apron were split between two contractors.

Why the apron should come first

The VDOT curb, gutter and sidewalk along the street often sit higher than the driveway behind them. In the video, another contractor laid a paver driveway before the apron was touched. With the driveway height already locked in, the apron couldn't be dropped to ease the steep grade off the street. Had we controlled the whole excavation, we could likely have taken the entire entrance down several inches and removed the hump that bottoms cars out. Doing the apron and driveway in one excavation is about grade control: when we set both elevations together, we can tune the slope across the whole run.

Built to the VDOT detail

Because the apron sits in the VDOT right-of-way, the work ran under a VDOT land use permit. VDOT's approved apron details are plain, unreinforced concrete, and adding steel deviates from the permitted standard, so this apron was poured as a 7-inch slab of 4,000 PSI concrete over a compacted sub-base with no steel. Where the public sidewalk runs through the apron, the pedestrian access route was regraded so its cross-slope does not exceed 2%. In our experience these 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.