Block Paving Removal

Flow2010

I am in the process of buying a property. At the moment the garden in completely block paved by some coloured tiles or similar. These have all faded and looks not so good. Any ideas on rough cost (per m2) of removeal and conversion to a normal garden? Thank you in advance.

BitterAndTwisted

Lift the paving yourself and offer the blocks on Freecycle to anyone who will collect them.

If you want a Roll-Royce landscaping service it could cost you an absolute fortune. Are there any local landscaping contractors in the area who could give you a quote?

tyllwyd

What's underneath the paviours? Is it just a plastic membrane and sand, or is there hardcore, or concrete? You'd need to budget for lifting the paviours and getting rid of them (might be possible to give them away?), then removing whatever is above the soil underneath, so that's a few skips worth. Then you'd need topsoil to replace what you've removed, and grass seed or turf. Do you need to budget in labour, or would you do it yourself?

You should be able to find some online calculators to help you estimate.

joerugby

The cost could be quite high depending on the size of the garden and on what you find underneath.

Block paving can usually be cleaned with a pressure washer, might be worth trying this first

geoffky

Get the tool to lift them.its not that expensive.

Soot2006

A sledgehammer, a wheelbarrow, some shovels, etc and a skip/grab lorry.

Alternatively put the paving on Ebay free to collector who also needs to remove it. I got 35 nice paving slabs that way and was more than happy to do the work myself. Think the people were disappointed though as there were about 2ft of hardcore underneath!

pararct

If block paving has been done properly it will have a sizeable amount of hardcore under it. I have just gone the other way and had one built. Enough to park 4 cars on to give you a scale of size. It was concrete before and the builders needed 6 x 8 yard skips to cart off the rubbish and existing hardcore (had to be relaid and compacted). Whole job came in just under £5,000 but a half of that was labour.

Rockporkchop

When you say you want to replace it with a "normal" garden, what do you mean? Grass or some other sort of paving? Because if you still want paving, I recently found this, went to have a look and would definitely consider using it:

http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/Driveway-Slate-not-Block-Paving-Paving-Tiles-/180694710460?pt=UK_Paving_Decking&hash=item2a123e78bc

I don't know anything about the company, or whether the tiles are available elsewhere, but it did look like a decent alternative to digging everything up and starting again.

Or, if it is just the fading that is bothering you, did you know brick paving can be restored and recoloured. You would be surprised at how well it turns out and it's not expensive either.

G_M

As others have said, you need to find out what's underneath. Block paving for a drive, that has to take a car driving on it, would have lots of hardcore/cement etc as a foundaion so would be a major removal job.

Hopefully as this is a garden, and designed just for walking on, it might just have a layor of sand beneath to level the surface.

Lift 2 or 3 blocks and dig down!

gravitytolls

Reckon your best option is to stick 'em on freecycle 'x amount slabs, blah colour, free to anyone who can remove them.'

You'll be inundated with responses and it won't cost you a penny.