Limestone Driveways | Expensive and Luxurious Just Like Granite!

Limestone driveways, much like granite, are expensive and luxurious. As with granite, it is extremely rare to find a solid limestone driveway; it is far more common for limestone to be used in aggregate for a cement or asphalt driveway, or to be crushed to create what is known as a “crushed limestone driveway.”

Crushed limestone driveways are essentially gravel driveways, but the gravel is actually small limestone. These offer all of the advantages of gravel, and can be crushed to specific sizes, even dyed to specific colors, to suit the needs and tastes of the homeowner.

Limestone itself is an ancient building material, used in the construction of the Great Pyramids at Giza, in Egypt, which still stand to this day, over four thousand years after their initial construction, testifying to its durability. Like granite, limestone is very costly to extract, and very heavy, making it too expensive for most budgets: in fact, buyers often pay up to five times the cost of the limestone in extraction and transportation fees! Crushed limestone, or limestone aggregate, is considerably less expensive, and therefore more accessible as a driveway material.

Limestone aggregate is a particularly useful driveway material to be used in construction, as its density and strength allow it to withstand the freeze-thaw cycle of colder climates, and the constant abrasion caused by regular use. Solid limestone is similarly useful, but comes with a glaring weakness: acid rain. Acid rain is particularly damaging to limestone, damaging the surface and eroding the substance over time. Even the Great Pyramids at Giza are suffering the effects of prolonged exposure to harsh acid rains. It is therefore recommended that limestone not be installed in areas where acid rain falls frequently. Limestone aggregate, however, does not suffer this same weakness, as it is mixed in with other building materials, such as concrete and asphalt, that are much more resistant to acid rain.