Celtic Knot Driveway

My dad hated our driveway since we moved into our house 15 years ago. The concrete was cracked and uneven, and showed significant wear and tear. A part of the driveway was finished with gravel, giving the area a hodge-podge feel, diminishing the aesthetic of the space. Over the summer, he decided to tear the entire thing up and start anew. He had always intended to do it himself, but at the beginning of the project consulted some contractors to see exactly what would be necessary to get the job done. They quoted the project to be $95k, but he got it done for under $30k.

1. Planning software (I used Adobe Illustrator and Photoshop)
2. Yellow design bricks
3. Grey outer bricks
4. Black outline bricks
5. Crusher gravel
6. Sand
7. Polymeric sand
8. Jackhammer
9. Skips
10. Compactor
11. Guidesticks
12. Screed
13. Lower attachment for screed
14. String

He asked me to be in charge of the design, which proved a daunting task. We wanted a Celtic knot, since he was born and raised in Ireland, meaning the culture has always been a relevant part of my life. I started with an approximation of a border knot in bricks sketched on Adobe Illustrator, but the connections were too rough; he wanted it to flow more smoothly. We considered doing a Celtic cross, but decided it might limit the resale value of the house, so we went with one that had a similar vibe but doesn’t have excessive religious overtones. The shield knot is a round infinity pattern of four interconnected quadrants, offering protection and warding off evil when used in a house. We decided it would be necessary to use three brick colors, an outline for the knot, an inner color, and an outer color, the outline being necessary to show the overlapping paths of the knot.

We had to go to many different stone suppliers to find bricks that would work for our idea. We went with a typical looking yellow brick, a variety of grey shapes that made a natural feeling pattern, and a thin black brick for the outline. Because it was typically used only as an accent, the distributors we spoke to did not have enough of the black brick in stock for us to purchase, so we ended up going directly to the wholesaler to purchase all our bricks.

Once we had decided on the dimensions of the bricks we would use, I determined the design using Adobe Illustrator. I made a document the size of the driveway/parking area, and sketched a shield knot in it. I made the outline of the knot the width of the black brick, and filled in the outline with black rectangles of the necessary size, individually shaping them to follow the curve of the knot. I filled in the inside with a repeating simple pattern of yellow bricks, which I made a sample section of and then copied and pasted into the knot. Finally, around the outside I made a basic module of the varying types of grey bricks which repeated and was able to connect with itself.

In order to estimate how many yellow and black bricks would be needed, we more or less just counted how many were in the sketch, and calculated how many palettes would be necessary, rounding up. The grey brick was harder to estimate, because I did not know if the basic module of repetition I had created was accurate to the distribution of different sizes of bricks in each palette: this we calculated according to how many square feet the grey brick would need to cover, again rounding up.

First, my dad had to remove the existing materials, a mixture of concrete (80%) and gravel (20%). He used a jackhammer to break up the concrete and removed it with skips. He then set down guide sticks that corresponded to where we wanted the sand to finish, at the height the bricks would be laid on top of. He also ensured when determining the level that the flow of water was away from the house.

Next, he laid down 3 inches of crusher gravel, using screed (wood that ran from one guide stick to another) to level off the materials. Since we wanted an inch and a half of sand on top of the gravel, we had a second stick attached below the screed 1 ½ inches lower to allow us to level the gravel using the same guide sticks.

He used a compactor on the gravel to ensure there were few pockets between the gravel, and then added a layer of sand on top, using screed along guide sticks to level out the layer.

We measured to find the center point of the Celtic knot design, and I laid the first brick (an honor for the lead designer!). A video of the first brick ceremony is attached.

Following the design, my dad laid bricks starting from the center working outwards, first doing the grey center, then the black border, then the yellow inner part of the knot. The most difficult part of this was making sure each quadrant was equal and maintained a constant radius; this was achieved by doing each quadrant on its own, then constantly checking them against one another to ensure they remained the same. (An honorable mention goes to my brother on this step for his assistance in brick laying!)

Using a diamond blade circular saw to cut bricks as needed, he filled in the rounded shapes around the bricks that hadn’t needed to be cut. Each brick was individually measured to fit its space. Since he worked quadrant by quadrant, the leftovers of one quadrant’s cuts could be flipped and inserted into another quadrant, ensuring minimal waste and requiring less cuts for the overall design.

He reused the compactor to run over the bricks, using a rubber pad between the compactor and bricks so they were not damaged.

The finishing touch was brushing polymeric sand into the cracks between the bricks, which was a very zen process. Excess sand was removed to leave a slight groove between bricks. It was then saturated with water, which activated the bonding agent in the sand, bonding it to the bricks and minimizing weed growth between bricks.

To wrap it up, he used 90 degree plastic tracks to anchor the corners of the brick design to keep them in place while adding a stone border. This ensured the outer bricks did not drift away from the central design over time, and made it easier to apply the border.

He also added a path design to a different section of the driveway following the same process. In the end, the project occupied over three thousand square feet, and required upwards of fifteen thousand bricks. I enjoy showing it to my friends when they come over, and my dad can frequently be found admiring it, finding pride and satisfaction in the aesthetic improvement as well as the clearly superior function. Water runs off it away from the house, and it is smooth enough to walk across barefoot comfortably.