Using Limestone Base for Your Oakland County Brick Paver Project

Why use limestone base for your brickpaver project in Oakland County? Road builders and engineers use high quality road base to be a vital factor in building long lasting roads. Because crushed limestone base has been used for over 60 years, its service record is well known. Paver projects built with crushed limestone base will last hundreds of years. Crushed limestone base has been used extensively in the United States since the mid 1940s. Crushed limestone base have proven to hold up better than 21AC crushed stone, road gravel or crushed concrete.

With the introduction of crushed limestone base in the 1940s, road builders soon began to appreciate the unique properties of this excellent road base. It results in long lasting, smooth riding roads. Because excellent results had been achieved on many paver projects, crushed limestone base was chosen for use on the interstate highway.

Brick Paver Base Quality Factors:

The very best brick paver base should perform well in both dry and wet weather. Since limestone base is made up of broken particles of solid rock, it performs well even in wet weather. A paver base’s function is two fold. First, it must provide a roof over the underlying soil. Soils are strong when they are dry and weak when they are wet. Limestone has a characteristic of adhesion to itself. This stickiness and the fact that there is a crushed rock to fill every void, allows the crushed limestone base to form a dense impervious mat that sheds water. Second a brick paver base must spread the concentrated load of vehicles using the road to a large area of the weaker soil below. Once properly packed into place, the limestone base is itself strong enough to support the largest rubber tired wheel load. The limestone base layer then spreads the load over a large area of soil below.

Brick Paver Design and Engineering:

Depending on the strength of the underling sub grade and the weight and density of the expected traffic, the depth of flexible base will vary between six inches and thirty inches.Crushed limestone base is easy to place, but the sub grade must be properly prepared. The steps to preparing a sub grade are to first insure that the area is well drained. Next, the sub grade must be dried or wet to optimum moisture level and compacted. When the sub grade is ready, then the base can be dumped on the sub grade, spread, and compacted. Both the sub grade and limestone base should be compacted at optimum moisture. Optimum moisture is the amount of moisture that will allow a material to be compacted to maximum density. This number is determined in the laboratory. Experienced construction personnel can usually get very close to optimum moisture, simply by observing the appearance of the materials. Many people, experienced in placing limestone base, will intentionally get the base a little too wet and then let it dry back as they compact the base.