Driveway Finishes

Qwerty?

Hi all, Finally at the stage of deciding on a driveway finish for approx 500 sq metres around our house and we are looking for some advise/ideas.

Ideally we would have loved a pea gravel drive, but understand that these are impractical with driving on and for children. (The other finish we would like is paving, but at 500 sq metres the price is too much.)

Another option we thought about, was using Tar and Chip, and using small washed pea gravel as the chip, but have been told this is totally impractical for turning cars on. Has anyone any experience of using this?

Then we are back to tarmacadam/asphalt, which we aren't mad about the look of, but feel is our only option. Would there be an advantage in using Asphalt instead of Tarmac?

Bascially I'm looking for ideas/opinions/experience on the various finishes used on driveways.

Thanks

Q?

TequilaMockingBird

There seems to be alot of stamped concrete drives about lately:

http://www.emdecimpressions.co.uk/beforeafter.php

dardevle

pattern concrete will probably be cost prohibitive
as there is not much difference between the price
of it and block paving-also as its a highly specialised
job of work i would recommend that anyone thinking
of having it done to research it thoroughly,
when its done right its lovely but as its a one shot
deal only(concrete hardens!)when its done wrong
yer married to it!

TequilaMockingBird

dardevle wrote: »

pattern concrete will probably be cost prohibitive
as there is not much difference between the price
of it and block paving-also as its a highly specialised
job of work i would recommend that anyone thinking
of having it done to research it thoroughly,
when its done right its lovely but as its a one shot
deal only(concrete hardens!)when its done wrong
yer married to it!

I've seen a couple of really awful ones alright. There's someone near me that has the concrete done fine, but whoever did the coloured finish on it spilt/dragged it all over the plain concrete path beside the driveway. It looks terrible.

dardevle

seen one done a few years back that turned the swans in
the nearby river pink from the colour runoff!:eek:

yop

I thougt I was going to win the euro millions there so had the gold driveway in mind but alas the cheats did not pick my numbers.
So I have a few options to go with.

1. Which I will go with for now, is 1" hardcore which I will roll with a motorised roller. A friend got that done and its as solid as a rock.

2. Paving/cobblelock, expensive so will only be done over a small area around back of house.

3. Concrete - drive is done in section, probably 20/30 ft long at a time. You can do this in 2 ways. One lad I know bought that power that you mix in cement from coloring rig caps and that, its black. He now has charcoal colored drive.
Then another option, you know that color stone, people put it on their flowerbeds and that. You can, when the cement drive is wet, scatter that onto the drive, if you give it a good covered and scatter it by hand it will leave a nice finish.

I am sure there are holes in what I suggest though

Qwerty?

Thanks, I've seen the concrete online before, and can't say the look appeals to me at all, too glossy and fake looking.

I've got a price for tarmac, which isn't too bad. I know the ideal solution is the resin bound gravel drives. http://www.hexhamsealants.co.uk/bond.html But i got a quote from www.topstone.ie last year of €37500:rolleyes:.

dardevle

you could also try a combination of both paving
and tarmac...a mostly tarmac drive but with a
paving feature (circle,diamond etc) to jazz it
up a bit without incuring huge expense
by the way -37500 ouch!

*Derek*

You should get resin bond cheaper done cheaper than what you were quoted.. What i would suggest is sourcing the stone and resin yourself and geting someone to do it or alternatively doing it yourself. Another thing you can do is expose the aggrates in the concrete by using a retarder but concrete/Tarmac would work out expensive for your size area. If wou wnat name of supplier for resin or gravel pm me.

boots1

Qwerty,

Two family members have pea shingle on driveways & neither have a problem driving wise. Occasionally, it needs a little rake, but if take-off is not over-exuberant, its typically fine. Not wonderful for children playing granted, but they've overcome that by laying concrete at rear of house & pea gravel meets it at two sides. Something to ponder maybe. IMHO also, the pea gravel is muc more aesthetically pleasing than either concrete or tarmac/asphalt (not to mention cheaper). Good Luck.

Redjeep!

We had our driveway tarmac'd a few months ago. It had been compacted gravel for a few years before that. Total area was around 750 sq m.

One word - Fantastic.

It's cleaner, easy to keep and stops dirt getting walked into the house. It's also 100% better to ride a bike on and the kids now have a large area to play basketball and football. They never liked the bounce of the gravel.

Only other thing would be to advise caution on who you get to do it. There's a huge difference in quality between different companies. It took us a while to decide, the guys we used were a family company who had been doing it for 35 years and completely contradicted what everybody else had said about drainage, base layers etc.

We've actually had local builders come up to us afterwards to tell us how good a job these guys did (honestly !! ).

tinofapples

Ideally we would have loved a pea gravel drive, but understand that these are impractical with driving on and for children

This would be my choice of driveway finish too but for the wife who has raised the same concerns you mention. As someone has suggested here I have also mentioned that we could have a small portion of the driveway at the back of the house perhaps either concrete or paving for the children.

secman

Hoping to go the gravel route too , kids on bikes not an issue, ther'e 25 and 22 now !

Not a fan of the Tarmac myself, cousin had it done (twice), first time it unravelled, and it does nothing for the house, apart from being easier to walk on !


Secman

Qwerty?

tinofapples wrote: »

This would be my choice of driveway finish too but for the wife who has raised the same concerns you mention. As someone has suggested here I have also mentioned that we could have a small portion of the driveway at the back of the house perhaps either concrete or paving for the children.

Yeah, our latest line of though is to pave the area around the house, and gravel the driveway. Anyone tried the DIY route for paving ?:o (about 400m2)

North&South

Hey, I have to agree with Redjeep there.....

We had our drive tarmacked last week, after 10 months of compacted hardcore/gravel. It's absolutely fantastic & the guys who did it worked quickly & professionally - a bit disconcerting when the road machine arrived the night before, mind! It was HUGE!!

I guess it looks great because we have black/grey stone on the front of the house & it's painted white with black edging, so it all fits nicely.

We got 3 estimates & our landlady settled on a cash price with the cheapest - so she paid 6500 euros, rather than 13500 which was the dearest quote! Qwerty, go with what you can afford, what you have time to maintain & something that you know you'll love the look of!
Julie.

bauderline

The thought would occur to me that I would rather have my children play football on a nice grass lawn than a tarmac / concrete drive ?

baud.

Gavin

Qwerty? wrote: »

Ideally we would have loved a pea gravel drive, but understand that these are impractical with driving on and for children. (The other finish we would like is paving, but at 500 sq metres the price is too much.)

Roadstone have a plastic honeycomb product which you put down under the gravel. The honeycomb keeps the gravel stable, so you can drive on it and it doesn't bunch up or form tracks. Probably still the same problems with kids though, not friendly to knees!

I think it might be expensive enough as well, not sure.