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We’re in the middle of a home remodel at home and we just got the driveway re-paved with concrete. After the new concrete is poured, you obviously have to stay off of it while it is curing. But how long do you have to wait before you can walk on it and more importantly, how long do you have to wait until you can drive or park on new concrete?
The short answer is you can probably walk on concrete after 2-3 days and you can drive on it after 1 week. I stress the word probably because there really isn’t a hard and fast number that you can go by. However, these are general timelines that will keep you safe from damaging your fresh new concrete. If you want to learn a little more, I’ll go into some more detail to give you a better understanding of the concrete curing process.
Let’s first talk about concrete. Concrete is quite strong in compression, but extremely weak in tension. This is the reason why reinforced concrete involves the use of reinforcing steel to be placed at the lower section of concrete. When there’s a load bearing on the concrete, the top part of the concrete experiences compression and the bottom part sees tension. The end result is a combined system of steel reinforcement taking on the tensile load and the concrete taking on the compressive load.
Here’s a graph taken from one of my old reincorced concrete textbooks from college, showing how the compressive strength increases over time. Concrete takes 28 days to achieve full compressive strength. If you received 3,000 psi concrete, then it will get to that 3,000 psi compressive strength at 28 days.
Obviously, a person walking on concrete is not a whole lot of load on the concrete, so you can already walk on concrete a couple days after the concrete was poured. A car on the other hand will be a lot more force, so it’s safe to wait at least 7 days. If you wait longer than the 7 days, it’s even better. If you want extra assurance of keeping that fresh new concrete from getting damaged, perhaps you can wait 2 weeks before driving/parking your car back on it.
Concrete is also highly susceptible to cracking, so putting a large load on concrete can potentially cause the concrete to crack in areas more prone to cracking. As the saying goes, it’s not a matter of if concrete will crack, but when. Even with expansion joints cut into the concrete, your concrete slab could still crack at susceptible locations such as corner locations.
I hope this post helps if you’re trying to figure out when you can drive your car back onto your newly poured concrete driveway. I personally waited a week before driving my two cars back on and there were no issues at all. If you want the ultimate in surface protection, I’d recommend sealing the concrete and allowing it to cure. This will help minimize staining and tire marks on the concrete.
