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New Driveway

Soldato
Joined
8 Sep 2003
Posts
23,396
Location
Was 150 yds from OCUK - now 0.5 mile; they moved
Hey guys.

I have had a new driveway laid, the old drive was getting on, it was slabbed and grassed originally.

This was the drive when I bought the house in 2015.

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The tree was taken down a few years back, it just got too big and was blocking light into the house for both us and our neighbours.
The slabs started to take some abuse from 2 cars being driven on and off the driveway, we replaced the grass for slate pebbling.

This is just after the tree was cut down, with just a stump left. As you can see the tree cut light to the soil around the tree base, and only weeds were remianing, no grass.

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The fence panels were replaced and the soil was replaced with slate pebbling.

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A new gate was installed to the rear of the property also.
This was the old gate, the weather has miss-treated it.

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And this was the new gate.

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This was all done last summer in 2025.

Well this year I decided that I wanted a full brand new drive and the front wall removing.

This is the update as of today. All finished. I'm very happy with it. The slate pebbles that I only put down last summer were relocated to the rear garden and used so wasn't wasted.

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There is one final job still to be done, which is to re-render the small wall between our property and the house to our left side, it is not in great shape, but that's a fairly quick easy job once I start it.
I did want that wall taking down and a new wall building, but the company who laid the driveway suggested against it, because they said there is a chance that the wall is supporting our drive as it is 2ft higher than the driveway next door, and removing it to build a new wall could cause some issues with the ground sliding a little.
 
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Looks good, but surely you should have sorted the wall first before laying a brand new resin bound drive?

Thats like fitting a new carpet and then trying to paint the skirting boards afterwards.
 
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Looks good, but surely you should have sorted the wall first before laying a brand new resin bound drive?

Thats like fitting a new carpet and then trying to paint the skirting boards afterwards.
You are possibly right, but with good due care and attention it should be fine. Put down some decent sheeting and it will be ok.
 
Sorry to tell you this but your gate is installed wrong. The diagonal braces should take the load to the hinge side top to bottom.
oh yeah, I never thought about that, should be easy enough to take the support brace off and fit new ones running the other way. A job for next weekend then.
 
out of interest.. can you tell me how much that cost? as we are looking to get a resin driveway. did you get the same people to do the base? we were quoted just over 30K for ours!

looks good by the way! the only thing that scares me about a resin driveway is if the base is crap, and starts sinking, which will cause cracks, a repair job is normally not 100% color matched. Resin looks so much better than blocks though, and lower maintenance
 
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out of interest.. can you tell me how much that cost? as we are looking to get a resin driveway. did you get the same people to do the base? we were quoted just over 30K for ours!

looks good by the way! the only thing that scares me about a resin driveway is if the base is crap, and starts sinking, which will cause cracks, a repair job is normally not 100% color matched. Resin looks so much better than blocks though, and lower maintenance
£30k is a total rip off unless you have a GIGANTIC driveway!!!
 
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out of interest.. can you tell me how much that cost? as we are looking to get a resin driveway. did you get the same people to do the base? we were quoted just over 30K for ours!

looks good by the way! the only thing that scares me about a resin driveway is if the base is crap, and starts sinking, which will cause cracks, a repair job is normally not 100% color matched. Resin looks so much better than blocks though, and lower maintenance
Neighbour had his done somewhat cheap, sinking already. Guidelines are easy to find online.

We are in need of a new driveway but i just want cheap and lasts forever not overly fussed about looks, probably go with tarmac with a border or something like that.
 
out of interest.. can you tell me how much that cost? as we are looking to get a resin driveway. did you get the same people to do the base? we were quoted just over 30K for ours!

looks good by the way! the only thing that scares me about a resin driveway is if the base is crap, and starts sinking, which will cause cracks, a repair job is normally not 100% color matched. Resin looks so much better than blocks though, and lower maintenance
£13k all in I paid for it. I did get about 8 quotes, which ranged from £8.5k (silly low AVOIDED) up to £18.5k. I went with the 3rd cheapest option, because the owner of the company who came and quoted gave me good vibes about him, he was very honest and genuine and explained the whole process in detail form start to finish.

£30k seems very excessive. My driveway was 98m² to give you a better understanding. The £13.5k included removing the front wall and and all the excess soil etc, all everything by the same company.

Here are some better photos of the drive now from the pavement, as the boss-man of the company called me around 8am today to say he came to check it this morning (which in itself, shows he cares!) and he said the driveway is dry enogh to walk no now, so he removed the tape, but advised me to not put our cars on the driveway at least until tomorrow evening.

They even built the new steps to the front door too. The door plague with number 53.... reminds me my wife bought a new wall plague with a solar light also to replace that, another thing I need to install this weekend.

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Did they do a breakdown of labour vs materials? Been looking at a resin driveway myself, but funds are limited!
They didn't in writing. But verbally he did, these numbers were given to me about 2 months ago when I first got the quote etc.

But he said the resin material were by far the most expensive - at around £3.5k to £4k for his estimate when he quoted.
The tarmac was around £1k he said.
The base was about £600.
The brickwork he did not give any pricing for.
The rest went on labour and then his profit.

He didn't have to hire any diggers or whackers, rollers as he has his own, which I presume helps him make the pricing reasonable.

It was around 5 days work in total, varying amount of workers from 2 to 5 depending on the days task at hand.


Here are some photos of the job as it progressed over time.

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What happened to the requirement to fit a drain at the end of driveways?
google tells me this. The resin and layers underneath are full permeable.



In England, there is no universal rule requiring a channel drain at the end of every driveway. The requirement is to prevent surface water from running onto the pavement or public highway.

A channel drain—often called an ACO drain—is normally needed at the boundary when:

  • the driveway is impermeable, such as ordinary concrete, tarmac or conventional block paving; and
  • it slopes towards the road.
It may not be needed if the driveway is permeable or drains to a lawn, rain garden or soakaway within your property.
 
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