Decide

Repair, Resurface or Replace a Concrete Driveway

Three routes out of a tired driveway, with the published price of each and the condition that decides which one you are actually eligible for.

Updated August 2026 · Antioch Concrete

Most pages about driveway replacement assume you have already decided to replace. That skips the useful part, because two cheaper routes exist and one of them may be open to you.

Which route you qualify for is not a matter of budget. It is decided by the condition of the slab, and specifically by whether the trouble is on top of the concrete or underneath it.

The three routes, as published

All from HomeGuide:

• Repair - $300 to $3,000, depending on the damage
• Resurfacing - $3 to $7 per square foot, or about $850 to $2,900 for a driveway. It means taking off the top layer, making good minor cracks and flaking, and bonding on a thin overlay
• Full replacement - the driveway itself at $6 to $15 per square foot, plus $2 to $6 per square foot to remove what is there now

The ordering is not a surprise. What matters is that the cheapest route you are actually eligible for is set by the slab, not by what you would prefer to spend.

The test that decides it: on top, or underneath?

Everything turns on one distinction, and you can make it yourself in about five minutes.

Surface problems look bad and stay level. Flaking, pitting, a rough scaled patch where salt has sat, fine crazing across a panel. Walk it and nothing changes height.

Base problems involve movement. One panel sits lower than its neighbour. A joint has stepped so you can catch a toe on it. A crack is noticeably wider at one end than the other. Something rocks slightly when a car rolls over it. Water pools where it did not used to.

Surface problems are candidates for all three routes. Base problems are candidates for exactly one, because neither a repair nor an overlay touches the ground, and the ground is the thing that is wrong.

Route one: repair

Right when the damage is localised and the rest of the slab is sound. A single cracked panel, a spalled patch, an edge that has broken away.

Be clear about what a patch is. It will always show, because fresh concrete set beside years of weathering cannot be made to match, and nothing closes that gap later. Most people take the deal willingly at a few hundred dollars against a few thousand. Where it stops being a deal is when the same fault reappears next to the repair a winter or two on, which is precisely what a base problem does.

Route two: resurfacing

The underrated option, and the one most often dismissed by people who would rather sell you a pour. An overlay genuinely works, on the right driveway.

The right driveway has a structurally sound slab with a worn surface. You get an even, fresh finish for a fraction of replacement cost, and the existing concrete keeps doing its job underneath.

The wrong driveway has fractures through its depth or a subgrade that is moving. Bond a new layer onto that and the faults come through the overlay, usually within a couple of seasons. You will then pay for the replacement you were trying to avoid, having already spent on the overlay.

Ask directly whether your slab is a bonding candidate, and ask what the answer is based on.

Route three: replacement

The only route that reaches the ground, which is the whole reason it costs what it does. The old slab comes off, whatever failed underneath gets corrected while there is access to it, and the new concrete is placed on ground that has been put right. The route itself, tear-out through to the Village application, is what our driveway replacement in Antioch page walks through.

Two costs belong to this route and no other: demolition and disposal at $2 to $6 a square foot, charged that way because reception facilities bill on tonnage and a driveway is several tons; and putting the sub-base right, a figure no one can pin down in advance for the simple reason that the slab is in the way of looking at it.

A good bid handles that unknown by naming an allowance and stating what would exhaust it. Silence on the subject now tends to mean a variation later.

Replacement is also the only route where the surface material is genuinely back on the table, since the old slab is leaving either way. If that has you reconsidering, we have set out what the concrete-versus-asphalt argument gets right and wrong against the same published figures used here.

Comparing routes that are not the same length

When two routes are genuinely open to you, the instinct is to line the prices up beside each other. That comparison is broken, because the three options do not last the same amount of time.

A cheap patch and a full rebuild are not competing offers. One is buying you a couple of seasons, the other two decades, and a price tag on its own cannot tell you which represents better value. What settles it is the pairing: price alongside expected service life, considered together.

So make the service life an explicit part of every quote you collect. Ask what the contractor expects their work to hold up for, and treat a firm answer as a mark in their favour. Vagueness here usually means the answer is short.

The Antioch specifics

Whichever route you take, if it involves the driveway rather than just a patch, expect the Village to be involved. Antioch charges driveway permits at 2% of total estimated cost with a fifty dollar minimum, plus a filing fee, so the permit scales with the route you choose. It is one more reason the cheaper route, where you qualify for it, is cheaper than it first appears.

The geometry rules apply to a rebuild as much as to a new driveway: twenty feet maximum at the curb and a five foot setback from property lines. If your existing driveway predates those and is wider, raise it early rather than discovering it at inspection. Full detail is on the Antioch driveway cost page.

What a good bid already states, whichever route

• A diagnosis: surface or base, and what it is based on
• The expected service life of what is being proposed
• For resurfacing, why the existing slab is considered a sound bonding surface
• For replacement, the demolition rate and the sub-base allowance
• Which party files the permit, and the project value written on that filing

Afterwards

New concrete, whether a full slab or an overlay, wants a specific first year. The schedule is on the driveway cost page, and the short version is grit only through the opening winter.