Driveway pavers in West Palm Beach FL - a paver driveway built to stay level

An installed sand-set concrete paver driveway in West Palm Beach usually costs about $14 to $17 per square foot, plus tearing out any old driveway. That's the going rate in the area, not our quote, and since it's priced by the square foot, a short single-car driveway and a long double one land in very different places. Tell us the square footage and whether an old driveway has to come out, and I'll write up your number at the visit.

You need a right-of-way permit from Palm Beach County's Land Development Division if your driveway connects to a county-maintained thoroughfare road or needs a culvert to carry ditch water under it. Permits come from whoever owns the road, so on a city-owned street the county sends you to the city, whose Building Division takes questions at 561.805.6700 or ds@wpb.org. The county's Road Atlas or online map can show who owns your street.

Where the county owns the strip of land between your lot and the road, decorative pavers can go there only with a recorded removal agreement that the county's Land Development Division staff sign, and that agreement puts the upkeep on you. On a city-owned street, the city sets the rules for that strip. If it isn't clear who owns your stretch, we check with the city or county building office before any pavers go past your line.

It comes down to how deep the groundwater sits, because federal guidance says permeable pavers generally aren't placed where the seasonal water table is less than 2 feet down. They've still been used on sandy coastal ground in other states, so each lot gets looked at on its own, and I'll tell you whether yours is a good fit when I come out. If you go that way, the surface gets swept or vacuumed now and then so rain keeps soaking in.

Paver industry guidance calls for a base at least 6 inches thick under a home driveway on well-drained soil, and deeper where traffic, soil, drainage or climate call for it. When you compare bids, ask each one what base depth it includes, because that's the part you'll never see once the pavers are down. The trade group CMHA also recommends its certified installers, who've trained on paver methods, so asking about that is another fair way to compare crews.

You can usually drive on pavers set over stone and sand once the work is finished, because they don't need curing time the way poured concrete does. Permeable pavers take traffic right away too, and they can even go in during light rain. A concrete slab base is the exception, since the slab has to cure before the pavers go on top.