Steep Driveway Solutions
How to Fix Your Entrance And Prevent Your Car From ScrapingThe Driveway
Steep driveways present numerous hazards to vehicles. A car’s bumper, oil pan, engine cover, even the axle can be damaged over time as they are scraped pulling in and out an entryway like this. They are notorious slip hazards during heavy rains and winter. Business owners can even be held liable for damage to vehicles that result from these culprits. There are many ways to minimize risks and damage to vehicles. Let’s look at several ideas for your home or business.
A note for homeowners installing a new driveway:
To avoid running afoul of local building codes, familiarize yourself with all relevant local restrictions. Counties and cities often include highly specific building codes and regulations, including how steep a driveway can be.
Ideally, a driveway should contain a slope no steeper than 15% to facilitate water drainage (25% is often the maximum permitted). Steeper driveways are sometimes necessary, especially in hilly residential neighborhoods and in mountain towns. But with steeper driveways come increased hazards. This is why transition sections are so important: they reduce the risk of these hazards by creating an area of the driveway with a more gradual slope approaching a sidewalk or street. Transition zones also protect pedestrians and nearby vehicles in the street. So what are some steps building and homeowners take to create a safer transition from their driveway to the street?
Top 4 Steep Driveway Solutions
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Add Protective Barricades
Barriers can be added to the sides of a driveway to prevent a vehicle from slipping off a steep incline. These barricades can absorb the kinetic impact of a vehicle without damaging the slipping vehicle.
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Re-shape Your Entrance
If your budget permits, reshaping your driveway to include one or more curves in it will necessarily slow ascending and descending vehicles, reducing many of the problems with steep entrances.
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Add Texture Surface To Your Driveway For Traction
Adding a textured surface to the driveway’s surface can increase traction by providing a better grip surface for a vehicle’s tires. Additional components, like gravel, can be applied atop an existing driveway to provide additional traction.
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Add A Driveway Curb Ramp
For drivers with lowered cars and steep rolled curb entrances, adding a ramp helps prevent your car from scraping the curb and allows a vehicle to transition smoothly onto to the street. There are numerous pre-made ramps available, but these manufactured solutions can be expensive and limited to specific angles and curb gap depths. Curb Ramp offers owners an inexpensive DIY alternative to pre-made ramps.
Owners exercise good judgement when looking at these options to mitigate the risks to their vehicles, other vehicles, and pedestrians. They ask questions like: How do I stop my car from scraping the driveway? What do you do when you have a low car and a very steep driveway? Will scraping the bottom of my car on a curb cause any damage? While cars are built to withstand the occasional bottom out, regularly scraping the bottom of your car can do significant damage over time. When you consider the cumulative repair expenses incurred, the cost of a quality solution is easily justified.
Reshaping a driveway and texturing a driveway through repaving can be prohibitively expensive. Extensive planning is recommended when reshaping or repaving to avoid extensive repairs and a prolonged work schedule. As an inexpensive DIY alternative, this driveway curb ramp kit also saves time since it can be installed in less than an hour and can be driven on after only 48 hours.
Pre-Made Rubber Driveway Ramps: The Expensive Unicorn
If money is no object, a premade ramp may work for you. You will want to measure your driveway and curb gap to determine which ramp could be right for you. And then you’ll need to confirm the chosen ramp has a reliable history as a durable product. And be sure to get a pre-made ramp with some tread for efficient traction. If you live in an area with significant rains or drainage problems, you might need to install a ramp with a drainage channel. Pre-made ramps can save you time installing, but since they are not custom fit to your curb gap, finding a reliable one that fits can prove an expensive challenge.
Stop Scraping: The Solution To Rolled Curbs
If you’re looking for a solution to prevent your car from scraping the driveway, consider a cost-effective, reliable curb filler like Curb Ramp. As a DIY product, some effort is required. But the end result delivers a ramp perfectly tailored to your driveway for a fraction of the cost of pre-made solutions. You can control the size of a drainage channel, the angle of incline between the driveway and the street, and even add a substrate to make your ramp removable. For drivers with lowered cars and steep driveways, there are several effective methods of mitigating risk to your car, cars in the street, and pedestrians. And this do-it-yourself solution is perhaps the most cost effective option.