Putting in a drive - what have you got and would you recommend it?

magan_tt

Hi - how big is your area that you are graveling.. mins is abotu 25 M2 (l shapre) i hitnk it will look odd as everyone in the road has done block paving.

brownbake

A nice foam backed carpet is lovely

voices

Ive got pea shingle its great but has its bad sides . good for hearing people walk up your drive or drive on it so its fairly security concious. it lets the rain drain away well too. bad sides are cats if you have them like it . your always walking gravel into the house you'd be suprised where it gets!! and the gravel needs topping up occassionaly.

ormus

ive done my own a few times on a budget.
first time was concrete, dug the foundations and got a lorry load of large stones. then a readymix lorry of concrete. wasnt too pretty but very cheap. bout 200 quid.
next one was even cheaper. dug over the ground and trampled it in. then ebay for large slabs. bout 50 quid plus van hire to collect the slabs.
(we have to weed bout twice a yr). no big deal.

Locoblade

wallbash wrote: »

In defence of block paving :j

So they discolour a bit .... charm
Weeds . kill off once a year
Resand every other year . bag of the correct sand , wizz around with brush

Maintaince ( and I have a garage to both sides of the house and parking for a number of cars ) an afternoon a year.

Block paving everytime.

Agreed, can't be any more maintenance than raking gravel for 10 minutes every few weeks. If people are put off by a maintenance routine consisting of the odd couple of hours per year then I wonder why they wouldn't have concreted the drive when they did the rest of their garden, as mowing a lawn or tending to flower beds is surely going to be far too much hassle too!

We laid our 65sqm driveway with block paving over a year ago and Ive not found any weeds growing yet. If its laid properly and the blocks are good quality so fit tightly together, then weeds shouldnt be a big issue.

ormus

ps.
i got my MILs drop kerb done, by some local road workers in their lunch break.
i gave em 100 quid.
that was some yrs ago, never heard owt off the council.

coolagarry

I take a regular walk and must pass every kind of drive ever invented. Agree with all the comments above but was particularly negative with regard to gravel. So many of the gravel drives looked tatty, gravel had sunk, weeds growing up etc.
I have however changed my mind after seeing one of the tatty drive owners raking up the gravel, laying a membrane and returning the (washed) gravel with some additional gravel. It only took him a few days and looks really great. I've no doubt it will look tatty again in 4 or 5 yrs but he can easily do that again. He has the area finished all round with concreted paving blocks which keeps everything in place

Locoblade

We put a membrane under our block paved drive for the same reason, it doesn't cost very much (IIRC around £50 for ~60sqm) so worth doing first time whatever you lay, although in our case there's 25-30cm of scalpings and sand on top as well so I don't think many weeds would grow up from below that lot anyway.

MrsE_2

Mine needs doing badly, but can't afford it yet.

Mine is fairly large.

Can park 4/5 cars & could still have room for flower beds!!!!

There are little stubby tree trunks where we had some leyandi removed, should I get them grinded out or put a small raised flower bed along there?

I saw pressed gravel used on Ground Force once & I thought it was great, I wonder how the price compares to Tarmac?

I think Tarmac is our only real option because of the size.

One of my sisters neighbours had his tiny two car hardstanding done for 4K, that would put ours in the 12k to 16k bracket!!!!!!!! At that rate!!!!!!!!

So do I get the tree trunks grinded out (about 7 of them) or build in a raised bed, a couple of food deep & 20 foot or so long?

Anyone know how pressed gravel compares in price to Tarmac?

Just to complicate matters, there is a bit of a slope from the road to the house, so drainage will be a major consideration.

Locoblade

The other thing that needs considering is that technically from October this year (according to http://www.burdensenvironmental.com/content/new-legislation-paved-driveways-gardens), due to drainage concerns you'll need planning permission to lay any driveway surface that isn't pourous, which I assume will include concrete, tarmac and most block paving drives.

Im not sure if it applies to re-surfacing existing driveways but I suspect if you were changing from say gravel to tarmac, the letter of the law may say that you'd need to apply.