Concrete driveways in Tampa, finished in shell

Two approvals for one driveway

The City of Tampa treats the apron and the driveway as separate questions. Any work on a driveway or sidewalk inside a City right-of-way needs a right-of-way permit, and the City's code makes it unlawful to work there without one; its manual says the driveway permit comes before any curb, approach or gutter is taken out. The drive on the lot is filed as a residential driveway application, with a plan of the driveway, every property line and the width of the right-of-way.

A large drive adds a step: over 1,000 square feet, the City asks for a signed and sealed topographic survey. Then the City looks before anything is poured. The property lines and the new driveway are staked for an inspection before work starts, the forms and base are inspected before the pour, and there is a final inspection once the right-of-way is put back, so our schedule is built around those visits.

What the City sets at the street

In the right-of-way the City's manual fixes the section: a concrete driveway, its flares and its curb returns are six inches thick at 3,000 psi, and the sidewalk where it crosses the drive is six inches too, against four everywhere else. Widths are fixed as well. A one-car opening is 21 to 27 feet at the street with straight flares; the widest two-car type is 28 to 32 feet with five-foot radius flares. The drive has to start at least a foot from the extended property line, and its flares cannot cross onto the neighbour's frontage.

So the extra width of a wider driveway goes on the lot, where it is yours to pour, and the apron stays inside the City's limits. Whether a shell finish runs past the property line onto the City's strip is settled on the permit plan, so we draw it both ways. On a corner lot the drive also stays 25 feet back from the intersection, and an old curb cut you no longer use is built back up to full curb height.

Oaks, root zones and the shape of the drive

Tampa protects its trees by size. Under the City's tree code, a protected tree is any species not on the exempt list measuring five inches or more across the trunk, and a grand tree is thirty-two inches or more. The driveway plan has to identify every tree within twenty feet of the work, keep construction fifteen feet from a specimen tree and twenty feet from a grand tree, and an approved arborist has to certify any plan that comes closer.

Inside a protected tree's root zone the City allows no change to the ground during construction, no grading and no parking or storing of equipment or materials, and its guidance says that cannot be waived. So a Tampa driveway is often drawn around a live oak rather than through it, and nothing stands under the canopy during the pour. A drive that needs a tree to come out starts with a removal permit.

Hyde Park, Seminole Heights and Tampa Heights

In three of the City's historic districts the driveway is reviewed as well as permitted. Hyde Park's design guidelines need a Certificate of Appropriateness before any driveway is modified, replaced or added; staff can sign off a like-for-like replacement, and anything more goes to a public hearing of the Architectural Review Commission. Seminole Heights and Tampa Heights carry the same rule.

All three prefer concrete aprons and concrete ribbon drives, and all three say not to use pebble-surface materials or asphalt where they can be seen from the street, or to pave a front yard for parking. An exposed shell surface may well be read as pebble-surface, so on a street-facing drive in those districts we take the finish to the Commission's staff before we quote it, and a scored concrete ribbon drive is the answer they already prefer.

Green space, ditches and the wider drive

City lots have to keep a quarter of their area as green space, and driveways do not count toward it, so on a smaller South Tampa lot a widened drive or a parking pad can run out of room before the owner does. The City's definitions also settle one claim for us: a surface with significant shell in it is not counted as pervious, so we never describe a shell driveway as one that lets water through.

On streets with a roadside ditch, the apron is a drainage crossing, and the permit plan has to carry the crossing details from the City's stormwater manual. A horseshoe drive is a frontage question: on a local street the City's drawing wants at least 66 feet of frontage and 26 feet between the two openings.

Fifty-one miles from the yard

Our yard and showroom are on 14th Street West in Bradenton, about fifty-one miles from Tampa City Hall, a little over an hour by I-75 in light traffic. There is no Tampa yard; the crews travel, so a Tampa driveway is planned as a whole job from the first visit. If you are weighing shell against river rock, exposed aggregate and exposed shell are compared side by side.

The back of the house is a different conversation. Pool decks in Tampa covers the decks behind South Tampa's older houses, and why colour decides how hot a deck gets.