Getting Your Driveway Ready for the Wet: A Pre-Season Check for Tablelands Concrete

Short answer: before the storms arrive, clear the drains and the low side of every slab, sweep the joints out, look along the edges for anything undermined, and hose off the red dirt so you can see the surface properly. Most driveways need nothing more than that. A few need a concreter, and the dry weeks left in the build-up are the time to find out which.

Why the wet is the real test for concrete up here

Concrete itself copes with rain. What causes trouble on the Tablelands is water getting where it should not: under a slab, along an edge, or pooling against the house. Red soil holds water and moves when it is saturated, so a small drainage problem in October can become a lifted corner or a cracked edge by March. The good news is that almost all of it is visible now, while the ground is dry and you can walk the whole job in twenty minutes.

The twenty-minute walk-around

• Drains and grates. Lift any grate at the bottom of the driveway or along the garage and clear out the leaves, mulch and silt. A blocked grate sends the first heavy storm across the slab and into the garage.
• The low side of every slab. Find where the water runs off. It should run onto lawn, gravel or into a drain, away from the house and the shed. If soil, mulch or a garden bed has built up against the low edge, rake it back so the water is not trapped there.
• Spoon drains and table drains. On rural blocks, walk the spoon drain beside the driveway and the table drain at the front. Grass, washed-in dirt and fallen branches block them quietly over the dry.
• The joints. Sweep out the control joints and expansion joints. Weeds and packed dirt in a joint hold water against the concrete and push the edges apart over time.
• The edges. Look along the sides of the driveway and any path. If the ground has washed away and you can see under the edge of the slab, that is worth fixing before the wet, because the next storm takes more.

Hose off the red dirt first

On the Tablelands every driveway wears a layer of red dust by the end of the dry. Give it a hose and a stiff broom before you inspect it, because the dust hides hairline cracks, stains and worn sealer. A pressure washer is fine on plain concrete. On exposed aggregate or a sealed finish, keep the nozzle moving and not too close, so you clean the surface rather than strip it.

Sealed driveways: is the sealer still doing its job?

If your driveway is exposed aggregate or coloured and was sealed, splash some water on it once it is clean. Water that beads on the surface means the sealer is still working. Water that soaks straight in and darkens the concrete means it has worn through, usually first in the wheel tracks and where the sun hits hardest. Resealing is a dry-weather job, so if it is due, it needs doing before the storms rather than after.

What is normal and what is worth a phone call

Fine hairline cracks that have not changed in a year, a few marks from leaves and tyres, and sealer that is a bit dull in the wheel tracks are all normal for a driveway that gets used. These are the things worth a call before the wet:

• Water that sits on the slab or against the house a day after rain, rather than running off
• A gap under the edge of the slab where the ground has washed out
• A crack with one side sitting higher than the other, or one that has grown since last year
• A section that rocks or sounds hollow when you walk on it
• Stormwater from the roof or the road running straight across or under the driveway

Most of these come back to drainage, and drainage is far easier to sort with the ground dry than with the ground saturated. Our guide on why new concrete cracks covers which cracks are harmless and which are not.

Planning a new driveway or slab?

The build-up is the tail end of the reliable pouring window, and the start of the wet is when dates get harder to hold. If a new driveway, shed slab or path is on the list, it is worth talking it through now so the drainage is designed in from the start. We pour across the Atherton Tablelands, from Malanda and Atherton to Yungaburra, Tolga, Herberton, Millaa Millaa and Ravenshoe.

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