Driveway Installation
New driveways, crossovers and vehicle access.
We cover 4 regions and 171 suburbs across Victoria. Pick your area below. Each page covers the councils, site conditions and permit considerations specific to that part of the state.
What driveway installation actually involves
A driveway carries vehicle loads, which makes it a structural slab rather than a path. Thickness, reinforcement and base preparation all step up accordingly, and a driveway built to path specification will crack.
The other half is the crossover. The section between the road and your property boundary. That is council-controlled, needs approval, and has to be built to the council's specification. It is a separate approval from anything happening inside your boundary.
Technical requirements
- Council crossover approval and specification
- Base preparation and compaction
- Drainage and fall away from the dwelling
- Vehicle load design
How the job runs
- Confirm crossover requirements and obtain council approval if the crossover changes
- Set out levels, ensuring fall away from the dwelling
- Excavate and prepare a compacted base
- Form up, place reinforcement
- Pour, finish and cut control joints
- Cure fully before vehicle use
What goes wrong
The failures we get called out to fix are consistent. These are the ones worth asking any builder about before you engage them.
- Building a new crossover without council approval
- Insufficient thickness or reinforcement for vehicle loads
- Falls that direct water toward the garage or house
- Driving on the slab before it has cured
Tell us the address, we will tell you what applies
Tell us the address and what you are planning.
We reply the same business day.
Driveway Installation by area
4 regions, 171 suburbs. Each page is specific to that area.
Whittlesea & Plenty Valley
52 suburbs around Mernda
Driveway Installation in Whittlesea & Plenty Valley →Inner East Melbourne
57 suburbs around Camberwell
Driveway Installation in Inner East Melbourne →Inner West Melbourne
33 suburbs around Footscray
Driveway Installation in Inner West Melbourne →Casey & Cardinia
29 suburbs around Berwick
Driveway Installation in Casey & Cardinia →Common questions
These answers apply wherever the job is. Anything specific to your area is on the relevant area page above, and anything specific to your property is a conversation.
Do I need council approval for a new crossover?
Yes. The crossover is the section between the road and your property boundary, and it sits on council land rather than yours, so it needs an application and approval before work starts. Councils assess sight lines, the distance from corners and intersections, drainage, and any street tree that would be affected. Services complicate it too. Pits, water meters and telecommunications assets in the nature strip may need to be adjusted by their owner, which takes its own time. Start that process early, because approval is often the longest part of the job.
Concrete, asphalt or pavers?
Concrete lasts longest with the least attention and gives the widest range of finishes, but a repair is visible and a failure usually means replacing a section. Asphalt costs less up front, goes down faster, and softens in real heat, so it suits longer rural driveways more than short suburban ones. Pavers are the easiest to repair, because a damaged unit lifts out and a new one goes back, and permeable options help where stormwater runoff is a constraint. Edge restraint is what decides whether they stay flat.
How long does a driveway take to install?
The on-site work is short. Excavation, base preparation and the pour are a few days for a typical suburban driveway, followed by a curing period before vehicles use it. The schedule is usually set by everything around that. Council approval for the crossover comes first, any inspection has to be booked, and service relocations run on their own timetable. A driveway that could be built in a week often takes considerably longer from first enquiry to first car, and most of that gap is approvals rather than construction.