Concreting Services

It comes from what will drive on it and what it is sitting on, not from a standard number. A domestic driveway carrying cars is a different design to one that has to take a truck or a caravan, and reactive clay changes the answer again. Base preparation matters as much as the slab itself. A well-compacted base under a thinner slab outlasts a thick slab poured on soft fill, every time. Where the loading is unusual, that is an engineering question rather than a judgement call on site.

Foot traffic comes first, after a couple of days in reasonable weather. Vehicles need longer, and heavy vehicles longer again. Concrete keeps gaining strength for weeks after the pour, with the standard reference point sitting at 28 days, so early loading is a risk even when the surface feels hard. Cold slows the whole process down. A slab poured in July is not at the same strength on day seven as one poured in February.

Clay is common through Melbourne's west and north, and it swells and shrinks with moisture. That movement transfers into anything sitting on it. The point of control joints is not to stop cracking but to decide where it happens, so the slab cracks along a neat tooled line instead of wandering across the middle. Fine hairline cracking is normal in concrete and is not a defect. Wide cracks, steps in level, or cracking that keeps opening are a different matter and worth looking at properly.

For a driveway or any slab taking vehicle load, yes. Mesh or bar does not prevent concrete from cracking, which is a common misunderstanding. What it does is hold the two sides of a crack together so the slab keeps acting as one piece rather than separating into panels that can tilt and step. The size and spacing follow from the design. So does the cover, which is the depth of concrete over the steel. Reinforcement sitting too close to the surface rusts and eventually pushes the concrete off.