Concrete driveway cost in St Louis, Missouri

What does a concrete driveway cost in St. Louis, Missouri?

Concrete driveway cost in St. Louis, Missouri runs $6.96 to $16.43 a square foot with us. Our standard drive starts at $8.64. That’s a 5 inch slab over 4 inches of packed gravel, with #4 rebar and a broom finish. A two-car drive of about 500 square feet comes to $3,650 to $8,650 before the drive cost, which is our trip out to your site.

The low end of that total is a plain broom-finish drive with fiber in place of the rebar, so it can work out under our standard price. The high end has every option on it, a decorative finish included. Four things move you along that range: the size, the finish, any old slab to tear out, and the ground under the slab. Around St. Louis, that ground runs from stable soil in the inner suburbs to loess over clay in the St. Charles bottoms and karst in Jefferson County. Loess is fine, wind-blown silt.

For the rest of the state, see the Missouri concrete driveway cost page. The concrete flatwork service page covers how we build every slab.

How does driveway pricing change across the St. Louis metro?

Our per-foot rate is the same across the St. Louis metro. What changes is the lot, the soil, and the finish. City drives in Central West End, Tower Grove, Soulard, Compton Heights, Lafayette Square, and Benton Park cost more a foot. They sit on narrow 25 to 40 foot lots behind pre-1940 homes. Most are tear-out jobs on a slab poured between 1900 and 1940. Drives in Webster Groves, Kirkwood, Maplewood, and Brentwood sit on mostly stable ground and start at $8.64 a square foot. Drives in Chesterfield, Town and Country, Ladue, and Frontenac run bigger, with circles and long aprons, and most owners there go decorative. In St. Charles County, loess over clay is what swings the price. In Jefferson County, it’s karst.

• City infill: one or two cars wide, 200 to 450 square feet, often running back to a carriage house or a garage off the alley. Tight access, the tear-out, and historic-district approvals on some blocks push the price per foot up.
• Streetcar suburbs: pre-war to mid-century homes with two-car drives of 400 to 700 square feet. Most pours here are straightforward.
• Executive drives: two to three cars wide and 700 to 1,400 square feet. Curves and grade changes add forming time, so even a broom finish costs more.
• St. Charles County new builds: O’Fallon, Wentzville, Lake Saint Louis, and the outer county, at 600 to 1,200 square feet. We often pour the sidewalk and apron along with the drive. In the river bottoms, the clay can call for a thicker slab or more steel.
• Jefferson County: Arnold, House Springs, Hillsboro, and the rural roads south of I-55, at 500 to 900 square feet. Karst is rock that water has eaten into hidden holes. On flagged ground, a void check and an engineer’s sign-off each add a few hundred dollars before the pour.

Cost by driveway size

Each total runs from a plain broom finish to a fully optioned drive. A small drive runs above the per-foot range, since setup spreads over fewer feet. On a big drive, the forms, setup, and crew time spread thin, so the price per foot drops. For a decorative finish, exposed aggregate starts at $10.04 a square foot with us, and stamped starts at $12.57.

Pavers or concrete for a St. Louis driveway?

A paver driveway in St. Louis costs $7 to $20^[1] a square foot installed, going by the national range for concrete pavers. On some blocks, though, the choice is made for you. Compton Heights, Lafayette Square, and Soulard can have historic-district or homes-association rules that ask a new drive to match brick pavers. Matching brick pavers costs more than a plain pour on the same lot.

Where the rules leave it open, a stamped concrete drive gives you a brick, stone, or tile look in one solid slab. It starts at $12.57 a square foot with us.

Should you coat or seal a St. Louis driveway?

On a driveway, the coat we put down is a sealer. Our quote tool has two, and either one can go on with the new pour or later.

• Penetrating siloxane sealer, $0.57 a square foot. It soaks into the concrete and keeps out water and road salt. It doesn’t change the look or the feel. Most drives should get this one, and it lasts 3 to 5 years.
• Acrylic wet-look sealer, $1.26 a square foot. It leaves a clear coat on top with a light, wet shine, and it makes the color look deeper. It’s best on exposed stone or a saw-cut pattern. Plan to redo it every 1 to 3 years.

St. Louis summers make the sealer matter. Along the Mississippi, humidity runs above 80 percent from late June through early September. On a slab with worn-out sealer, that damp brings up efflorescence, a white, chalky powder.

What does the St. Louis climate do to a driveway?

St. Louis sits at the mild end of Missouri’s freeze-thaw range. The metro sees 65 to 70 freeze-thaw cycles a year, per NWS climate summaries. The Ozarks and Kansas City see 80 or more. So the same slab, poured and cured right, lasts a little longer here than in the colder parts of the state.

Salt is the bigger threat. Five interstates cross the metro: I-70, I-64, I-44, I-270, and I-55. MoDOT spreads brine and rock salt on all five from late November through early March. Your tires pick that salt up and carry it onto your drive all winter. Salt water soaks into the top of the slab, then freezes and swells. Over a few winters, that pops off thin flakes of the surface, which is called scaling. Two things hold it off. One is a mix with tiny air bubbles in it (air-entrained, per ACI 318). The bubbles give the freezing water room to swell. The other is a penetrating sealer kept up on schedule. Together they do more for a St. Louis drive than extra thickness on a slab that never gets sealed.

What makes a St. Louis driveway last 30 years versus fail at 12?

Four things, and a good bid names all of them.

An air-entrained mix. Our driveway mix is 4,500 PSI with air in it. PSI is how much weight the cured concrete can carry. Per ACI 332, the floor for a home is air-entrained 4,000 PSI. On any other bid, check for at least that, with 4 to 7 percent air (ACI 318). A bid at 3,000 PSI with no air gives you a slab that scales and pops by year five, however thick it is.

A packed base. Our base is 4 inches of crushed gravel, spread and packed in layers before the pour. A slab poured on loose topsoil settles unevenly and cracks within two to three winters. Loess over clay in St. Charles and karst in Jefferson County need more ground work than that. A bid that never mentions your soil is a bid that’s going to crack.

Joints in the right places, filled right. Control joints are the saw cuts that tell a slab where to crack. On our 5 inch slab they go about 10 to 12 feet apart, so the crack runs along the cut instead of across the drive. Fill them with a semi-rigid polyurea or polyurethane that flexes with the slab. A rigid filler cracks within two winters and lets water down into the base.

A real cure. Concrete takes 28 days to reach full strength, and the first 7 matter most. We spray on a curing coat right after we finish, which holds water in the slab while it gains strength. A Friday pour that gets walked away from for the weekend builds shrinkage cracks into the top before a car ever touches it.

Should you repair or replace an old St. Louis driveway?

Repair it if the damage is on top. Light scaling, hairline cracks at the joints, or a little sinking at the apron usually means a repair job. A polyurea fill in the joints, leveling the sunken sections, and a fresh penetrating sealer can often add a decade to a 20-year-old slab. That costs a fraction of a new drive.

Replace it if the slab itself has failed. That looks like spalling, with chunks breaking off the top all over. Or it’s cracks where one side has moved up or down. It also looks like an apron that’s sunk enough to hold water against the garage door. What decides it is whether the slab under the damage is still sound. Someone who reads the slab honestly, on site, can tell you which side of that line your drive is on.

What is included in a St. Louis driveway quote?

What our standard drive includes:

• Layout, forms, form removal, and cleanup
• 4 inches of crushed gravel, packed in layers
• A 5 inch slab of 4,500 PSI air-entrained concrete
• #4 rebar on an 18 inch grid, set on chairs and tied
• A broom finish and saw-cut control joints
• A spray-on curing coat (per ACI 308R)
• The drive cost, worked out from your address

What gets its own line:

• Tearing out the old drive, at $2.30 a square foot
• Fill past the standard base
• A thinner or thicker slab, which the quote tool prices with its thickness slider
• A different reinforcement, like wire mesh or fiber
• Decorative finishes: stamping, staining, exposed aggregate, or brick-paver matching
• A sealer
• A karst void check and an engineer’s sign-off, where Jefferson County asks for one
• A pump truck where the ready-mix truck can’t reach
• Drainage work past the edge of the drive
• City permits, including St. Louis City historic-district approvals where they apply

Related St. Louis and Missouri pages

Our St. Louis concrete flatwork and St. Louis garage floor coatings pages cover the rest of our St. Louis work. For the whole state, see the Missouri concrete driveway cost page and the Missouri state hub.