Driveway Project

[Peerzy]

Afternoon all - the time has finally come for me to sort out our front driveway. We've lived in the house for 3 years now and my wife parks on the front grass and it's starting to feel all a bit too *****.

I've only got a streetview image from before me moved in (The area has been tidied up massively since the Google Streetview picture was taken);



The area is 6m*2.9m.

Ideally we wanted to extend the block paving across but the few quotes we had about 18 months ago just came in too expensive for it to be worthwhile (we're planning on moving in a few years and my wife hasn't minding parking on the grass). The main reason for getting it sorted is just for it to look nicer.

With all of the above taken into account and my preference for making it look nicer for as little cost I think we've decided to put gravel down. Plenty of other houses down the road have gravel driveway so it won't look out of place, it should be cheap(ish) to complete and won't take much time.

What am I looking at to gravel the area? I'd like to do the work myself (or with friends) over one weekend and think I've got a rough idea of the plan;

Day1 - dig out existing soil (roughly 20cm deep), have soil (3.5m3) collected by 'grabber truck'
Day2 AM - lay hardcore down (10cm)
Day2 PM - have MOT Type 1 delivered from GravelMaster, rent whacker and compact down to fill 4cm-5cm and gaps
Day2 PM - lay gravel into gravel holders which fills remaining 5cm-6cm

Anyone have any tips or advice? I'm unsure of how to get rid of the soil at the moment as that seems like it's going to be very costly?


Rough man maths seems to suggest - 6m*2.9M*20cm = 3.5m3

Each Travis Perkins bag is going to be roughly 0.5m3 so I'd need rougly 7 bags across all 3 materials. Cost roughly of £370.


TL : DR - looking for cheap way to make driveway look more presentable, landed on gravel - am I doing it right?

 

[Peerzy]

You could always get an 8 yard skip on your drive way to load the soil into from wheel barrows, you can also get a skip that has doors so you can walk right into it and tip out.

You will not need hardcore and MOT 1, you will get away with a recycled MOT or a 40mm crusher run, while these may not be readily available in bulk 1t bags, some googling and a few phone calls may get you a better deal.

You have made no previsions for any sort of geotextile, woven and non woven or any sort of geo grid, basically without this over time your sub-base will dissapear into the soil below.

There are products on the market that you can lay on top of your level, compacted sub-base to keep the stone in place, have a google for Adpave its a Naylor product, other manufacturers are available, TP can source this for you.

When choosing the aggregate you want to finish with take into account your location in the country, limestone may be expnsive if it needs to be transported a long distance into the area, also anything that is dredged from riverbeds i.e golden gravel will cost more.


If it was me doing this cheap, I would use this method,

1. Reduce dig 150mm

2.lay geogrid

3. lay 100mm sub base, with a slight fall to the kerbs and compact

4. lay non woven geotxtlie

5. fill with a 20mm clean limestone

EDIT: Buy a decent wide broom to sweep the gravel back in every other day ;-0

Thanks - you think 150mm will be deep enough? I notice you say to lay 100mm of sub base (THIS?) and 20mm of gravel - but I'm digging down 150mm so what happens to the remaining 30mm?

I have access to enough hardcore which can be delivered free which is why I was going to use it. 100mm of sub base over my area is going to cost a fair bit (£250~).

Getting rid of the soil seems to be my biggest headache at the moment, even soil skips are coming in at £250+.

 

[Peerzy]

2 things straight off the bat:

1. Change your fences - they make it look rough.
2. It looks like your drive has a drain cover of some sort - can you move it / build on top?

It's a bit narrow so anything you do is going to look tight and hard to keep a clean look, you may want to think about using it as something else or putting a garage there to divide it.

Alternatively get rid of the grass and have double parking with the same brick work throughout.

None of this is in anyway related to the thread. The fences have been changed (I specifically mention that the photo is over 3 years old and has been tidied up since then). Not interested in moving the drain cover. We already have a garage (round the back with car access). Don't want to block pave the grass bit due to cost.

I am specifically looking for advice and help with replacing the grass with gravel.

 

[Peerzy]

Thanks for all the helpful posts guys.

I've managed to arrange collection of the soil through a family friend for roughly £100 so I'm happy with that.

Had a guy on Gumtree come round and deliver a load of spare hardcore to me this weekend and I now know what needs purchasing and the order to do it. Planning to do the entire driveway over 3 days in the second week of April!

 

[Peerzy]

For those of you desperate to find out how this turned out;

Pre-work




Hardcore I had delivered


Digging out the soil


Laying the hardcore


Laying the MOT

Compacted down

Gravel going on

Testing it all!

I'm absolutely exhausted - the entire thing was done over the space of about 24 hours and pretty much all by myself. I work in IT and this is my first go at anymore more challenging than IKEA furniture so I'm happy with the results.

The gravel needs to be levelled and we need to decide what to do with the final 0.75m.

The soil will hopefully go via my BIL over the next few days. I did want to go for the gravel grid but the pricing put me off, we will see if it's a mistake or not!

It looks miles better than before and my only grip is the raised water company access drain but I'm not sure what I can really do about that.

Costings (so far)

2x MOT and 2x gravel - £180
Compactor hire - £29
Hardcore - £Free
Digging - £Free
Weed membrane - £26
Soil removal - £100 (tbc)

Total to be just over £300 all in.