Dropping Kerb, anyone 'in the know'?

Bufger

Morning MSE'ers.

My wife is due to have our second child soon. The house is completely baby proof and we can let them run around downstairs without them being able to kill themselves easily! (i'm sure they could still find ways, kids always can).

The only unsafe part we have is the road outside. We have on street parking on a busy road and often we wont have anywhere near to our house to park. My eldest will be 18 months when baby is born and im worried about my wife being able to manage them both over the road! I'm looking into getting our driveway done and the kerb dropped so we can park outside the house but have no idea of costs, applicability etc.

Heres a link to a very nice MS Paint diagram i've done: http://imageshack.us/photo/my-images/59/frontgardenkerb.jpg/

Our road is a long one and some people really far up it have it done but their garden slopes down towards the road and ours slopes up (only by 5-10 degrees). There is also the tree there, would they drop a kerb near a tree? is there a clearance needed to certain objects?

Then the MSE bit, how much does the kerb dropping cost, the tarmac to breach the gap over the path to the road etc and whats the best type of driveway to have thats low cost.

Sorry for all the questions, i dont know anyone thats had their driveway done before!

Forgot to mention, the A, B, C and D bits are where we currently park, its not 'on the road' but its on a gravel style bit between the path and the road. B would be my regular space although as there is no specific parking for residents its pretty much free for all (which is fair enough)

ic

Search your council's planning website and see if any of your neighbours have applied to do the same. I know on my road many of my neighbours have tried and failed - with poor visibility was given as the reason each time (its a 30 mph A-road with loads of on-street parking.

Bufger

ic wrote: »

Search your council's planning website and see if any of your neighbours have applied to do the same. I know on my road many of my neighbours have tried and failed - with poor visibility was given as the reason each time (its a 30 mph A-road with loads of on-street parking.

Thanks, I had already looked but it had no reference to kerb drops or driveways for the entire road at any point. Since last looking they have a pre-app service where you can ask the council how likely it would be to do it without sending a surveyor, i've sent the pic and description off to them to see what they think.

Mojisola

This isn't a DIY job. Your council will either have a list of approved contractors or will quote a price for their men to do it.

You can obviously do the drive yourself but you now need to get permission if it's over a certain area.

WestonDave

The tree certainly isn't helpful! What's isn't clear is the sizes involved. We've recently gone through the process of getting our approved (albeit for widening of an existing drive). Based on the research I did at the time (bearing in mind all councils are different), you have two problems - firstly planning requirements and secondly highways requirements. If you aren't in a conservation area, planning shouldn't be a problem - provided you are going to either create an area less than 5 square metres (which is unlikely as a car won't fit on that!) or you are going to use permeable paving or run the water off into a soakaway on your own land (again this is unlikely as your plot looks quite small). So in short you are going to have to use permeable paving such as block paving (and even then if they are picky, standard block paving doesn't comply!) or loose chippings. Concrete and normal tarmac are non starters - you can use permeable tarmac but I understand this is more expensive than block paving. Order of your options in price terms - chippings, block paving then permeable tarmac. Chippings can be done very cheap but you will need some form of barrier to stop them drifting onto the pavement and aren't that practical on a slope.

So assuming planning don't take an interest you then need to worry about highways. They will be concerned about visibility, and obstruction. The tree is a visibility problem as you will be emerging from behind it and have a potential blindspot to your right preventing you seeing oncoming traffic. This is where the size of your plot is important - if your plot is such that you are only taking out half of the front wall then potentially you could do it at the A end and just about fit in a dropped kerb and strengthened pavement without damaging the tree roots. If you need to go too close to the tree so you will damage its roots you probably won't be allowed. You will also need to show that you have the front to back distance on the plot for the car to be entirely contained - I think our council has a minimum limit of 5 metres unless you have 8 metres width in which case they assume you will park sideways across - this is to avoid your car sticking out over the pavement and causing an obstruction.

Costs round our way are about £100 per dropped kerb - you will normally need 5 - 3 flat and 2 sloping. On top of that you will have to pay to strengthen the pavement to cope with vehicles crossing it, and then the driveway. If you can get it in for less than £2k I'd be surprised.

Bufger

Thanks for the reply WestonDave, very helpful.

I thought the tree would be the difficult bit. It has one root that penetrates the ground on my side which gets parked on daily! I would imagine that will be the part that stops this application and i'd imagine the previous owners had informally looked into this too and came to the same conclusion.

I would go with chippings, i wouldnt have a problem doing that myself and reducing costs and i'm not too bothered about asthetics at the moment as we dont plan to move for a long time! I could easily box them in robustly so they didnt scatter onto the pathway.

Well it looks like it might be worth applying, even if i can get an extended drop from the drop for the entry next to A (effectively dropping it for the neighbours) this would stop people parking there and we might be able to do something for both of our properties, they had expressed interest at one point.

Thanks for your time