I am planning to turn my front lawn into a drive.
I have already removed the small tree and bush as marked in photo
tinyurl.com/oo3dhdu
It's approx 22 sq m.
My plan is to lift the grass, lay a fabric membrane and order 2 x bulk bags of some sort of stone chip (20mm) - Red seems to be cheapest, White 'Cotswold' not much extra.
Some questions
I've never lifted turf - any tips?
I've been parking the car on it (may or may not have been a good idea before lifting the grass, or may just have been poitless?) for the last week or so to see if it sinks (It doesn't), so Membrane then Stone chips - will that be OK?
Will 2 'bulk' bags be enough (places selling seem to suggest 10 sq m per bag), any real life experience?
Anything else I should be looking at considering my option above will be less than £150
|
I wouldn't have thought that option would work. Your stone would go through your membrane in no time.
We opted for digging out our driveway, then laying crusher run. Compacting that, then throwing on red gravel. After 5 years, it still looks good and only requires spraying and weeding occasionally.
|
Check the planning regs concerning hard landscaping. OK, you're not concreting over but definitions vary and 22m2 is big enough to be caught if your council considers gravel on membrane 'hard'.
We had similar stone on membrane in front of our old house. It worked well but we did have to periodically sweep it back into place where car tyres had squirted it out.
Last edited by: WillDeBeest on Thu 3 Apr 14 at 16:29
|
We have young neighbours at a couple of houses down the road who have opted for loose stone drives and paths.
It seems to me that the main problem is keeping the stones in place. It would be ok if they didn't spill out onto the pavement. The gutter by the kerb is full of the things.
|
It seems to me that the main problem is keeping the stones in place.
It is the handbrake turns for parking that cause the real trouble- make sure that all the front windows are toughened glass :)
www.youtube.com/watch?v=kC8uPmVWjPc
|
Why not do it properly ToMO, you've got a nice owse and it can only enhance it.
Howls about doing it in crazy paving, visit your local council depot and pick up enough broken paving slabs.
I (my bruv really) did our place in Hastings many moons ago using a selection of green, red, and (mainly) grey slabs.
It looked rather nice, if I say so myself.
Plenty of vids etc. on YouTube - go 4 it!
|
Forget the membrane - just lets the chips scoot about and tyres sink in to the stones.
The money you save on plastic can be invested in weedkiller.
|
OK, maybe I'll scrap the membrane idea.
Crazy pave, hmnnn.. I'll check out some of the videos then D.
I see that 'monoblock' is only about 10 quid a metre.
|
Absolutely no problem if you use the right membrane.
www.terram.com/products/geotextiles/
It's used on building sites all over the place and is often chucked down to make an access road for lorries. You car will present no issue at all.
If you just use stones without a membrane they will sink in and you will "lose" them.
For quantity, work out the volume you need for say 50mm or 75mm thickness and then add a bit as you always seem to need more.
|
>> Forget the membrane - just lets the chips scoot about and tyres sink in to
>> the stones.
>>
>> The money you save on plastic can be invested in weedkiller.
Don't forget the membrane, stuff might no grow north o' the border, but down here it does.
|
|
Turf stripping is hard work by hand - for 20+ sq m I'd be hiring a turf stripper. How are you going to get rid of it? It will make a surprisingly big pile... You will only get 1-2" off by taking the turf off, so you are going to need to strip a couple of inches of soil as well to make any sense of the stones, otherwise you will shove them out of the way pretty quickly. Another big pile - soon you will need an 8yd skip! The stones will end up everywhere too. And the ground will sink! Definitely phone up the local planning office and check - you don't want to be on the wrong side of them if they decide it needs permission!
|
|
I plan to move about 3/4 of the turf to the back garden to fill in some borders, but yeah, probably a fair bit of soil to get rid.
|
I did pretty much as you are doing and the big mistake I made was not hiring a whacker.
So I went with dig out, a base of type 1, then membrane, then red chuckies. After 3 years ruts are appearing. On the positive side, still no hint of any weeds.
This summer I plan to spend a day raking all the chuckies off the driveway, getting another few tonnes of type one, hire a whacker to level it all out, and then new membrane, rake back the chuckies and maybe need to top up with another couple of tonnes.
I also see you have brick driveway - I only have the chuckies or grass to walk across. My 19 year old daughter who wears those silly shoes with 8 inch heels that could stab your eye out hates the driveway. Has sprained her ankle on it a couple of times and the chuckies chip the heels as well. Apparently.
|
DE thanks, so a good quality membrane it is.
Bobby, thanks. Yeah, there is a slabbed path to the brick drive - that will remain. What area roughly is your drive (having used a few tons of type 1 and a couple of tons of chuckies) if you don't mind me asking?
Should I be putting a layer of hardcore down?
|
"Should I be putting a layer of hardcore down?"
I guess not. I think the idea is to lay the membrane on the earth. The Terram spec should tell you all you need about laying it.
|
Type 1 is hardcore - I would put that down below the membrane and only have the chuckies above the membrane. That way if you rake the chuckies (and don't rip the membrane in the process) then you won't bring the hardcore to the top which will make the chuckies look less nice!
Couldn't hazard a guess at the driveway, its long enough to fit about 2 and a half cars in, one car wide with space for all doors to be fully open!
|
We are just contemplating doing something with our drive and yard.
It's basically farm-track grade compacted shale, worn into ruts, with soft squishy edges and bits we don't drive over where you sink into mud before reaching rock-bottom.
In places larger boulders stand proud, worn smooth by years of vehicles.
I'm working on the principle that it needs the high spots bulldozing flat, lots of big hardcore in the soft bits, and then the ornametal chippings or whatever.
I've read that the secret of keeping the gravel from ending up in the road is to use a mixture of sizes of stone, graded from about 20mm to 30mm, chunky not flat, so that they compact together and can't roll over each other under sideways force.
I've also read that if needing large hardcore to stabilise soft ground, you need to grade down to smaller hardcore before the final surface, otherwise the smaller stones sink and get lost in the hardcore.
It's all quite complicated, and I don't really see where the membrane would go in relation to a drive that consists of varied substrate at different stages of softness and compaction.
|
The drive to our old house was covered with gravel - but the small pea-shingle stuff; the stones were rounded. The stones spread all over the place, and were so small that they got caught in your shoe-tread and were carried into the house. After some years, during a particularly wet winter, soil started to squeeze up through the shingle and it became a right mess. I did the temporary solution, and just covered it all with more shingle. Er ….. then we moved.
A friend had used larger size shingle on his drive but, again, he found that the round stones moved around too much. Subsequently, he redid it using a type of granite chipping that was massively more stable and it seems fine. I'm going round there this evening, so I'll ask him what the stuff is called and, just as importantly, what sort of base he prepared for it.
Last edited by: Haywain on Mon 7 Apr 14 at 18:03
|
"A friend had used larger size shingle on his drive…………………."
Further to the post above, I asked my friend about the drive; it's granite chippings - he thought '20mm'. The base was just soil covered with a membrane and the stone was kept from straying by concrete edging. There is very little movement of the chippings and he's been perfectly happy with the result. And, of course, it is self-draining.
|
>> The base was just soil covered with a membrane and the
>> stone was kept from straying by concrete edging. There is very little movement of the
>> chippings and he's been perfectly happy with the result. And, of course, it is self-draining.
>>
This is exactly my plan.
I'm going to start lifting the turf later today (by hand). I looked a couple of local hire companies, they want just shy of £100 to hire a turf cutter for a day and as they are capable of 500m per hour i'm thinking it's overkill anyway? Who knows, this time tomorrow I may well be down there handing over my hard earned!
|
I had to dig out a similar turf area to make way for a patio. If you're doing it manually, just take your time and check the levels carefully - you don't want to be digging out more than you have to. I was surprised by the actual volume of stuff that came off; I got a skip with a drop-down side so that I could wheel the barrow in, but I filled that one and topped up a neighbour's. I think I only went down 2ins.
Lay the membrane carefully and peg it down; if it is disturbed and gets chippings under an edge, it can be a nuisance to sort out. If the chippings are to be 2ins deep, then you can work out pretty well how many cubic m bags you will need. Don't order too much - it's worse than having too little - you can always 'top-up' to the right level afterwards.
Good luck!
|
|
And make sure your chips are not too small - my neighbour got small pebble type stones put on a pathway and all the local cats seem to think its their litter tray!
|
Well, I started it. I forgot I would need to lower the rounded top concrete 'path edging' blocks along the front of the lawn, so dug down to reveal concrete holding them in place. I'll need to hire some sort of hammer chisel to dislodge them. Hoping they clean up OK and I can turn them upside down for a flat edge and concrete them back in place albeit 60-70mm lower.
I spent a total of 3 hours yesterday and managed to lift probably less than 25% of the turf. Complicated by the fact it has a mass of tangled roots (anywhere from a couple of mm right up to 50mm) just under the surface. Don't know if a turf cutter would be any good in this situation?
|
"I spent a total of 3 hours yesterday and managed to lift probably less than 25% of the turf. Complicated by the fact it has a mass of tangled roots (anywhere from a couple of mm right up to 50mm) just under the surface. Don't know if a turf cutter would be any good in this situation?"
Sounds about par for the course - just pace yourself! I would just keep going, I wouldn't spend the money on a turf cutter which may or may not work - I would put the money to one-side in case another skip is needed.
|
Well you could buy a turfing iron which is a sort of a spade sharp on all sides but it would cost you around £50. To be honest for the comparatively small area you are dealing with a sharp spade should do the trick. Cut a line across the grass with the spade and then another a spade length apart. Cut into turf sized pieces. Then slide spade under turf and lift one piece at a time .
If you have somewhere you could use the soil in your back garden stack the turf upside down and it will rot down in a couple of months to form loam, an excellent soil improver.
|
I've been cutting it into 4' x 1' (easy enough to carry) sections and rolling it up.
As Luck would have it, I have an SDS hammer drill at work with a selection of chisel bits. 40 quid saved there :)
|
Fantastic martin - hours of happy reading there. Many thanks.
A quick skim suggests I need to excavate to a depth of up to foot and lay two layers - crushed stone and then the final surface. I haven't researched membranes yet.
Self-binding gravel looks interesting.
|
We dug ours out and edged with block paving bricks.
Then used a wacker plate vibrator on the soil, followed by a few tonnes of grano to dust hardcore, using wacker again and then some buff lime chipping of about 1/2 size and '1.5 stones deep'. Wacker again.
The last bit about 1.5 stones deep is very important and was told to me by the man who delivered it - now I see why and why it was important to get the hardcore level rather than level it out with the top stones as where it is deeper, the stones can move.
|
We have a mixture of crushed chalk, crushed cement and dirty gravel. With all the rain it has set in a heap and has to be loosened with a pick. Then it has to be taken to the potholes - many - and put in. Ideally the whacker should be used at this stage, but it's uneconomic to keep renting it a weekend at a time.
It's going to take forever at the present rate of progress.
|
I have quite an area of block paving which requires maintenance. A bit rash but I bought a whacker so I can mess about at my pace as and when.
Man maths calculated that when I eventually do not have to maintain said drive, downsizing or whatever, I can move it on for a reasonable price and have had its convenience.
|
>> I have quite an area of block paving which requires maintenance. A bit rash but
>> I bought a whacker so I can mess about at my pace as and when.
>> Man maths calculated that when I eventually do not have to maintain said drive, downsizing
>> or whatever, I can move it on for a reasonable price and have had its
>> convenience.
>
Petrol powered and very noisy?
|
Of course. Man toy. Not as fulfilling as the Husqvarna though.:)
www.machinemart.co.uk/shop/product/details/minipac-300-compactor-plate
Gone up in price considerably since I got mine.
|
It's finally done. I'll get a pic and post it up at some point.
A few notes -
Someone mentioned 'the turf will make a surprisingly big pile' - you weren't joking, I ended up filling an 8yd skip.
A few mentioned planning - Advice on the Scottish Government website pointed to no permission required if the drive was of porous construction, but paved or monoblock would require permission with adequate draining provisions. An email to the local planning office confirmed this.
It was actually closer to 30 sq. m. I used 3 'bulk bags' of stones. Covered nicely with 1 or 2 hundred kilos held back to see how it settles.
All in, about 25-30 hours of labour (very hard labour). Hardes part was digging out the concrete holding the edge blocks in place so I could lower them slightly.
|
Not terribly exciting, but to see a thread through to completion: -
tinyurl.com/lem7nay
tinyurl.com/kb2eakl
|
Proper job, as we say in Cornwall, all you need now is a decent car.
;-)
|
>> all you need now is a decent car. ;-)
>>
Damn you, I only done the drive so I could post another picture of my car!
;-)
|
|
You know I luvvit really, in fact it reminds me of the Mitsubishi Sapporo I had in the 80's, in many ways.
|
|
That looks a very neat job! Did you use a membrane between soil/stone?
|
>> That looks a very neat job! Did you use a membrane between soil/stone?
>>
Yes, a fabric membrane on top of the soil.
|
|
Oof, I'd forgotten you had that Soarer. Woof woof, as I probably said last time. I'm getting a bit of a bee in my bonnet about Jap imports, fancy a Nissan Stagea sometime.......
|
Driveway options - Dieselboy
