It was one of the strangest sites you have seen. As you came home from work you notice a strange look to your driveway. As you get closer you realize that for some reason you have long strips of toilet paper lining the large blocks of concrete. Once you have parked and get out of the car, your father announces that he has recaulked the driveway. The toilet paper is to keep dirt from landing in the caulking until it dries. His thought is that the toilet paper will later disintegrate in the rain.
Concrete repairs can seem simple, but without professional contractors they can become overwhelming and difficult to manage. And while many home repair and improvement projects may have worked or been effective in the past, today’s professional installation of concrete, if maintained correctly, can have a lifespan of 25 to 50 years. Driveway contractors understand the details of their trade and can produce the best results. Additionally, different climates require a different kind of driveway surface. For example, while it may be the norm to have an asphalt driveway in some of the most expensive and old suburbs of Chicago, this type of surface might be very uncommon in other areas of the country.
And while the surface choice may differ, some industry standards are pretty clear. For example:

• One car driveways are usually eight to nine feet in width.
• Two car driveways are usually 15 to 18 feet in width.
• Finished driveway pavement should slope at least one-fourth inch for every foot.

Asphalt Remains a Popular Driveway and Parking Lot Choice
Did you know that more than 90% of the parking areas in America are surfaced with asphalt pavement? Asphalt, in fact, also covers as much as 2.6 million miles of paved roads in the this country. Luckily, when this asphalt surface needs to be repaired or replaced nearly 100% of it is reused. In the year 2013 alone 67.8 million tons of asphalt pavement material was reclaimed. Used as surface for roadways, parking lots, and driveways it should not be surprising that 3,500 asphalt mix production sites operate across the U.S. These sites combine to produce about 350 million tons of asphalt pavement material every single year.
Concrete Is Another Popular Driveway Surface
Although asphalt is only available in black, concrete colors are available in as many as 250 different shades and colors. Like asphalt, much of the concrete repair work that needs to be done results in the recycling of old material. Broken up concrete can be reused for other road surfaces because it can be ground up and used in a new concrete mixture.
Although most concrete and projects, whether they are new jobs or repair jobs, require a professional, the results are often warrantied for many years.