Replacing a Rockhampton driveway: 4 to 7 days on site, 7 more before you park
On a typical 45m² driveway, demolition takes most of one day, excavation and base half a day to a day and a half, formwork and steel a day, and the pour one morning with trucks arriving from about 6:30am. You are parking on the street for roughly a fortnight. Budget $40 to $80 per m² for breaking out and carting the old slab, on top of $90 to $130 per m² for the new one.
Replacing a driveway is a bigger disruption than pouring a new one, because the thing being demolished is the thing you park on. Most of the questions we get are not about concrete at all: where do I put the cars, can I still get the bins out, will the dog cope, when can the delivery van come back. This page walks the whole job from the first measure to the seven day cure, with the real durations, the things that stall it in Central Queensland, and a printable checklist you can tick off before the crew turns up.
Every stage, how long it really takes, and what you have to do
| Stage | How long | What happens | What you need to do |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1. Free measure and quote | 30 to 45 minutes on site, quote back in 2 to 5 days | We measure, check the fall, look at the ground and the truck access, and work out whether the crossover is in scope. | Be there if you can. Point out the septic, the irrigation and anything you know is buried. |
| 2. Crossover approval, if needed | 2 to 6 weeks | If the section between your boundary and the kerb is being replaced, council has to approve it and the work has to meet their standard drawing. | Sign the application and pay the council fee. Nothing else starts until this clears. |
| 3. Service locate and booking | A couple of business days, inside a 1 to 2 week lead time | We lodge a free enquiry with Before You Dig Australia and mark up water, power, gas and comms before an excavator touches the ground. | Tell us about anything private and unmapped: irrigation, pool plumbing, a conduit you ran yourself. |
| 4. Demolition day | 4 to 8 hours for 45m² | The old slab is broken out with an excavator mounted hammer, the steel is pulled, and the rubble is loaded and carted to a recycler. | Every vehicle out on the street the night before. Windows shut. This is the loud day. |
| 5. Excavation and base | 4 hours to 1.5 days | Dig to depth, cart the spoil, import and spread road base, then compact it in layers with a plate or a roller. | Nothing. Keep the kids and the dog off the loose base, it moves under your feet. |
| 6. Formwork, steel and set out | Half a day to a day | Forms pegged to the correct fall, mesh laid and lifted onto bar chairs, expansion material at the house and the crossover. | This is your last chance to change the shape, the width or the finish. Say so now, not on pour day. |
| 7. Pour morning | 4 to 8 hours, trucks from about 6:30am | Concrete placed, screeded, floated, edged and given its final finish. In summer we start at first light so it is finished before the heat. | Keep the driveway clear until we leave, keep pets inside, and stay off the wet slab completely. |
| 8. Joint cutting | 20 to 40 minutes, same evening or next morning | Control joints wet cut at roughly 3 metre centres so the slab cracks where we choose rather than where it likes. | Nothing, but this is the loudest 30 minutes of the whole job. |
| 9. Curing | 7 days | Curing compound or damp cover holds the water in the slab while it gains strength. Forms come off on day 2 to 5. | Keep everything off it. No cars, no bins, no ladders, no dog. Water it if we ask you to. |
| 10. Clean up and handover | 1 to 2 hours on the last visit | Forms, pegs and offcuts gone, site swept, spoil carted, and we walk the slab with you. | Walk it with us. Park a car from day 7, a caravan or boat from day 28. |
Durations are for a standard 45m² suburban driveway in the Rockhampton region with reasonable access. Costs are on the pricing page and broken down further in the concreting cost guide.
Prepare for the crew checklist
Tick these off in the week before we start. Everything on it either saves you money, saves us time, or stops something getting broken. Your ticks are saved in this browser, and the print button gives you a clean copy for the fridge.
Two weeks out
The week before
The night before demolition
Pour morning
The first seven days
Do not do these
Want a start date and a written scope?
Send the details and we will come out, measure, tell you which stages your job actually needs, and give you a fixed price with dates on it.
What the trucks and the crew need from your block
A loaded agitator truck weighs around 26 to 32 tonnes. It needs a firm path about 3.5 metres wide with roughly 4 metres of overhead clearance, and it will not drive over an existing slab we have not inspected, a septic lid, a stormwater pit or a soft nature strip after rain. Where the truck cannot reach the pour, we use a line pump at $650 to $1,500, and on the hill blocks around Frenchville and The Range that is often the sensible answer rather than an argument.
We need an outside tap for the wet saw, the tools and the curing, and a standard outdoor power point for the saw and the screed. Neither will move your bill by more than a couple of dollars across the week. If nobody is home, leave the tap on at the wall and the side gate unlocked and we can run the whole job without you.
What the household actually notices
Noise
Demolition day is the worst of it: an excavator mounted hammer working in bursts across 4 to 8 hours. The concrete saw is louder still but only runs for 20 to 40 minutes. Queensland environmental rules restrict audible building work to between 6:30am and 6:30pm Monday to Saturday, with nothing on Sundays or public holidays, so that is the window. In summer we start at the earliest legal hour on purpose, because a slab placed at 6:30am finishes properly and one placed at 10am in February does not.
Dust and smell
Cutting and grinding concrete produces respirable crystalline silica, which is exactly why we wet cut rather than dry cut. That keeps the airborne dust down and also keeps the mess off your car and your windows. Concrete itself has almost no smell. If we are using a solvent based sealer at the end, that one does have a strong smell for a few hours, and we will tell you the day before so you can shut the windows on that side of the house.
Pets, kids and working from home
Dogs and fresh concrete are a bad combination twice over: paw prints are permanent, and wet concrete is strongly alkaline and will burn pads and skin with enough contact. Keep pets inside on demolition day and pour morning, and off the slab for the first two days. If you take calls for a living, put the demolition morning and the joint cutting session in your diary as unavailable and work somewhere else for those few hours. Everything in between is ordinary background noise.
What actually stalls a job in Central Queensland
- Rain, November to March. We will not pour into a storm front. Rain landing on fresh concrete washes the cement paste out of the top and leaves a weak, pitted surface that cannot be repaired, only ground back or replaced. We call it the day before and rebook at no cost. See our guide to the best time of year to pour concrete in Rockhampton.
- The crossover approval. Two to six weeks, and entirely outside our control. If the crossover is in scope, start it early. Our page on council approval for concreting explains what needs it and what does not.
- Unmarked services. A comms line or an irrigation main found 200mm down stops the excavator. A free locate through Before You Dig Australia takes a couple of business days and removes most of that risk, but it does not cover private lines that were never registered.
- Ground that is not what the quote assumed. Old fill, a buried tree stump, rock, or clay that is far softer than the surface suggested. We will stop, show you, and price the variation before we carry on rather than surprise you with it at invoice time.
- Late decisions. Changing the width, the finish or the joint layout after the forms are pegged means pulling them out and starting that stage again.
Waste, washout, and what a clean site looks like
Broken concrete goes to a recycler where one is taking material and gets crushed into road base, which is the same product we put back under your new slab. Steel out of the old driveway goes to scrap. Anything left over goes to the council waste facility. Truck chutes are washed out into a bunded pit on site or taken back to the batch plant, never into the gutter, because concrete washout entering stormwater is an offence under Queensland environmental law and it sets like rock in the pipe.
When we drive out for the last time the forms and pegs are gone, the spoil is carted, the kerb and footpath are swept, any concrete splash on the fence or the path has been washed off while it was still wet, and the only things left on your block are the new slab and a page of curing instructions. If we have marked or chipped something, we tell you before you find it.
The honest bit: when we would not replace it
Plenty of driveways get replaced that did not need replacing. If the slab is structurally sound and just stained, tired or dated, a grind and reseal or a bonded overlay at $65 to $110 per m² gives you a new looking driveway for about half the cost and none of the demolition week. If the only problem is a single settled panel, we can often cut out and replace that one panel for $900 to $1,800. And if the cracking you are looking at is fine, straight and not stepped, it may be normal shrinkage that needs nothing at all: our guide on when to worry about concrete cracks will tell you which one you have. We will always say so on the day rather than quote you a replacement you do not need. If you do go ahead, our page on warranties on concrete work in Queensland covers what you are covered for afterwards, and choosing a driveway surface covers what to put down instead.
Driveway replacement questions
How many days does it take to replace a driveway in Rockhampton?
Where do I park while the driveway is being replaced?
How loud and dusty is a driveway replacement?
What happens to the old driveway once it is broken up?
What stalls a driveway job in Central Queensland?
Do you need my power and water while you are here?
Get your driveway replacement scheduled and priced
Send the details and we will come out for a free measure, then email a fixed written quote with the demolition, the base and the pour itemised separately, usually within a few days.
Need it done around a delivery or a settlement date?
Tell us the date you have to have the cars back in the yard and we will work the schedule backwards from it. We cover Rockhampton, North Rockhampton, Gracemere, Yeppoon, Parkhurst and Mount Morgan.