diy gravel driveway need some help!

thepinkladez_2

hi all, we have a gravel driveway and a medium sized grass area to the front of our house. However the owner that lived in our house previously, built the drive by laying what looks like plastic sheeting over grass and then pouring 10mm gravel, roughly 5cm deep over the top. I guess it was constructed only to sell the house, as it did look good when we bought it but 2 years later and with one car and one sprinter on it daily its falling apart! the driveway has major groves where the van runs over it, the plastic is all ripped and the gravel flys all over the street!it looks awful i am so embarassed!:o

i want to replace all the drive and the do the grass area at the same time(that way both vehicles can fit on without constantly having to move one to get the other out).

I really am not sure how to relace the driveway but point blank refuse to spend either the £2K to professionall gravel it or the £4k for it to be paved!

i am guessing we need to do the following but am greatful for any advice!

1. remove all gravel and sheeting that is there.

2. dig out new drive? or just fill the grooves with????? (not sure what i need ? and does need to be compacted with the plates?)

3. cover with membrane.From scouring wickes i have found some black mebrane that is meant to be put under the gravel instead of the plastic that is there! this was the type that helped to stop the grooves forming?

4. cover in gravel

all help much appreciated as searched all our diy books but they dont cover drives! maybe i should have the proffessionals in after all!;)

Daisy_Daisy_2

Is that how much you have been quoted!
blimey, i think thats a lot.
I will ask my OH later- he's a builder he might have an idea?
in the meantime I am sure there will be loads of advice on the way!

adandem

We've just dug up, levelled and gravelled our back garden. It's probably the plastic and original uneven ground that't caused the problem.
You could hire a compactor if you have large holes to fill, ours was very firm so not needed.
We got the membrane from ebay, £30 for 100m and it's heavy duty. Wickes would have cost around £90. We went for the gold gravel, not cotswold stone as it won't crumble.
Most gravel stockists will work out the quantity for you if you give them your measurements. We had 7 tonnes whixh cost £270. This was virtually half the price of other stockists as we went direct to the quarry.
With gravel drives your wheels will always carry a certain amount onto the pavement.

thepinkladez_2

thanks adandem,

sorry to sound a bit thick but do you mind if i could ask you a few questions?!

what did you level the ground with? was it hardcore?keep seeing that mentioned and not entirely sure if i need it!

when you say your holes were firm do you mean the ground was pretty hard so you were able to just fill holes to ground level?our ground is rock hard as its clay and rock even with all this rain it hasnt made any difference!

what did you type in on ebay to find the membrane? was it literally membrane?!as wickes stuff is 1m by 25m at about £20ish.

don't hink we have any local quarries so think i will have to folk out the extra at wickes!!

shoppaholic_returns

We recently rennovated and finished our gravel drive.After road planings were laid it was then compacted with a large roller machine, you could do the same with a wackerplate if it was a small area, then the gravel was delived and raked into place. im assuming you have edging strips to the drive otherwise these would be concreted in first, we used road planings because they worked out much cheaper than hardcore for the huge area we had to cover this may work for you also or there may be little price difference, check this out. After a good few months you may find it all settles and you may need extra gravel, this hasnt become a problem yet.

poppyolivia

We dug up our garden compacted it then put plastic sheeting on it...then dumped 7 tonne of gravel...and its still ok 3-4 years later...maybe we are lucky???????? The guys that dropped the kerb said it wouldn't last 6 months....????? We don't get puddles and it looks even..the guy along the road has done the same as us and its a state, puddles and ground everywhere with a little amount of gravel!

We compacted ours with the back of a shovel!!hahaha!! How sad is that?LOL But hey it worked!!

adandem

Hi we had to skim off some of the garden and move it to other parts if that makes sense? Our house is only 12 years old so there was lots of hardcore under the lawn anyway so it was very firm.
This is the membrane we bought
http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/100m-x1m-HEAVY-DUTY-100gsm-WEED-CONTROL-FABRIC_W0QQitemZ310037621025QQihZ021QQcategoryZ122908QQcmdZViewItemQQ_trksidZp1742.m153.l1262

bookduck

I've gravel in my front garden. I wish to remove it and pave it. Gravel looked good at the time but keeping it clean, picking up passers buy cigarette buts/paper is a chore and moving the wheely bin across it is hard. At least with tile you can sweep it and is fairly weed free- the previous owner did not use a membrane

thepinkladez_2

hi bookduck,

sorry to hear about your dilema. the points you have made are food for thought but don't think they eally apply in my situation we are quite lucky to live in a quite close so don't have litterbugs walking past, on the odd occassion we get some rubbish blown in on recycling day but thats it.
I don't think slabs would be suitable as the slabs that were down have all cracked under the weight of the huge sprinter van my dh owns, think the only thing like that, that would be suitable would be block paving and we could never afford that!

Volcano

thepinkladez wrote: »

our ground is rock hard as its clay and rock even with all this rain it hasnt made any difference!

I don't think your ground is as hard as you think it is if it's got grooves from the vehicles in it!

Sounds like the last people bodged the sub-base, here's more stuff than you'll likely to ever need to know about sub-bases:

http://www.pavingexpert.com/subbase.htm

A very good site generally for anyone who needs to know about putting down drives.

(The cheap way): Without having seen your drive ........rake off all your old gravel, rip up the membrane, spread a tonne or two of type 1 stone (especially into the grooves!) then hire a whacker plate to get it all level (this is really critical for most drives, don't rely on a spade!). Put down the new membrane, rake back the old stone (plus maybe some extra) rake it all level then run the whacker over it again.

(The proper way): to do it properly you may well have to dig out the drive properly and start from scratch, you'll need to dig out enough to put down 10-15 cm of type 1, as well as room for the gravel on top. Digging into your topsoil and also its disposal can be a major cost. Certainly you'll need to do this on your small grassed area if you want to stand vehicles on it.