Paver Driveways in Chandler, AZ

A Chandler paver driveway usually means one of two jobs. Either the original concrete from the 1980s, 1990s or 2000s is cracked, stained and sunk at the garage and has to come out, or the house sits in an HOA neighborhood like Ocotillo or Fulton Ranch and the new drive has to suit the streetscape. Both begin with the same groundwork: grade, drainage, then a compacted ABC base 4 inches deep.

Budgeting a paver driveway in Chandler

Plan on about $5,000 to $10,000 installed for a Chandler paver driveway. That's a two-car drive of roughly 550 to 900 square feet in standard concrete pavers, with base, pavers and labor all in. (Side note: that works out to about $9 to $11 per square foot.)

Where your total lands depends on a few things:

• Tearing out the old concrete: adds about $1,400 to $2,700.
• Tumbled pavers: the same driveway runs about $5,500 to $10,800 instead of $5,000 to $10,000.
• Borders: a contrasting-color border adds about $300 to $450. A different border paver adds about $550 to $900.
• Pattern: no upcharge. A herringbone field is priced the same as running bond, basketweave or random.

Here's a worked example. Take a 700 square foot driveway on a 1990s Chandler home. In standard pavers, that's about $6,300 to $7,700. Add tear-out of the old slab and a contrasting border, and the total comes to about $8,000 to $10,850. The measured quote is the number you'd sign, and the estimator gives you a ballpark before that.

Taking out the builder's concrete

Chandler grew from about 30,000 people in 1980 to more than 240,000 today, and a lot of the homes from those boom years still have the driveway the builder poured. After a few decades, it's cracked across the control joints, stained by oil, and often settled right in front of the garage where the weight sits. Patching doesn't hold, and the patches never match.

We break out the slab and haul it away, then look at what's underneath before we build anything. If the old driveway settled, the ground under it usually tells us why. The replacement gets a real foundation. We spread ABC in lifts, soak each one and run the compactor over it until the base is 4 inches thick and hard. A screeded layer of bedding sand goes on top, the edge restraint goes in, and once the pavers are laid we sweep sand into the joints and compact the whole drive one last time.

Draining a driveway on old cotton and alfalfa ground

Chandler's neighborhoods sit on flat former farm fields, where cotton, grains and alfalfa used to grow. On a driveway, flat is a problem. Water from the roof, the sprinklers and a monsoon storm has to go somewhere. If the driveway doesn't carry it to the street, it ends up against the garage door or soaking into the base.

So the slope gets staked out with string lines first, and the finished drive tilts toward the curb. If we find caliche underneath, we treat it as a floor water can't pass through and give the runoff a surface route instead. Our post on where driveway water should drain goes deeper on how we pick that route.

HOA approval in Ocotillo, Fulton Ranch and other master-planned areas

The driveway is the biggest thing your neighbors see, so it's the first thing an architectural committee looks at. Expect to submit the paver, the color, the pattern and the border. We hand you samples and a drawing of the drive with every product named, ready to attach to your Ocotillo or Fulton Ranch application, and we confirm what the City of Chandler needs for your lot before booking the crew.

In a neighborhood where most driveways are still plain gray concrete, a tumbled paver with a contrasting border reads as a real upgrade without a loud color change. Once approval is in, the work itself moves quickly. Here's how long a paver driveway project really takes.

Paver Driveways in Chandler: Frequently Asked Questions