Driveways & Paths
Driveways and paths across Devon. Built permeable as standard, on a sub base that takes the weight of a car rather than the weight of a garden chair.
Driveways and paths across Devon. Built permeable as standard, on a sub base that takes the weight of a car rather than the weight of a garden chair.
Start here
There is a law about your driveway, and almost nobody mentions it
This one catches people out, and it is worth knowing before you get any quotes at all.
Since October 2008, if you lay more than five square metres of front garden with a surface water cannot pass through, and the rain runs off onto the road, you need planning permission. Five square metres is about the size of one parking space, so in practice it applies to almost every front driveway in the country.
There are two straightforward ways round it, and neither of them costs you more.
Impermeable
Standard concrete, sealed tarmac or solid block paving. Over five square metres draining onto the road, this needs planning permission.
Permeable
Gravel, permeable block paving, porous asphalt or resin bound. Generally, no permission is needed whatever the size, but individual properties can have restrictions. We check yours before work starts. This is what we build to as standard.
The other route is to direct the run off into a lawn, a border or a soakaway inside your own boundary rather than out onto the road. Back gardens are not covered by any of this, so a parking area behind the house is a different matter entirely.
If a quote you have been given does not mention this, it is worth asking why.
The surfaces
What you can actually put down
Gravel. The most forgiving option and the most at home on a country property. Naturally permeable, easy to top up, and cheap to repair. Laid on a proper sub base with a stabilising grid it stays where you put it rather than migrating into the lawn.
Block paving. The neatest finish, and you can lift and relay a section rather than digging up the lot. Specify the permeable version and the planning question answers itself.
Resin bound. Smooth, permeable and low maintenance. It is also the least forgiving of a poor base, because it goes down as one continuous surface with nothing to hide behind.
Natural stone and setts. For a driveway that has to look like it belongs to an older house.
Most people choose a driveway by looking at surfaces. The surface is the last decision, not the first.
Underneath
A driveway is a road, not a patio
A patio carries people and garden furniture. A driveway carries a car, and a car weighs well over a tonne, concentrated onto four small contact patches that sit in almost exactly the same two ruts every single day.
That is why failed driveways fail in a pattern you will recognise once you know to look for it. Two shallow troughs where the wheels go. Blocks sinking near the gate, where every vehicle turns. A puddle that forms in the same place every time.
None of that is the surface failing. It is the sub base being too shallow for the load, or laid on ground that was never dug out and compacted in the first place.
The edges
What stops a driveway spreading
Every block in a driveway leans on the one next to it. The ones at the perimeter have nothing holding them in unless there is a haunched edging course locking the whole thing together.
Blocks creeping outwards and gaps opening along the sides is what a missing edge restraint looks like three years later. It is invisible on the day the job finishes and it is the reason a lot of block driveways look tired early.
Water
Where the rain goes
Water has to go somewhere deliberate. A channel drain, a soakaway, a border. Not towards the house, and not out onto the pavement.
This is worked out before anything is laid, because a driveway that drains the wrong way cannot be corrected afterwards without taking it up.
The kerb
Getting off the road legally
If you are creating a new access across a pavement you need a dropped kerb, and that is a separate application to the highways authority rather than something we can simply lay.
Driving over a full height kerb without one is not allowed, and the council can require you to put it right. We will tell you whether your job needs one before you commit to anything.
Paths
Getting round the garden in February
Paths are a smaller job than driveways and the same principles apply, minus the vehicle loading.
What matters more is grip and drainage. A smooth path in a wet Devon winter grows algae and becomes genuinely dangerous by February. Choosing a surface with texture, and making sure water runs off it rather than sitting on it, is most of the job.
What it costs
No price list, and here is why
Driveway prices depend on what is underneath and how much of it has to come out. The same driveway on free draining ground and on wet clay are different jobs, with different amounts of digging, different sub base depths and possibly drainage that was not in the original plan.
So we come and look, at no charge and with no obligation. You get a written quote with the work set out and a price that does not move. If something unexpected comes out of the ground, we stop and tell you before we do anything about it.
Want a price for your garden?
We come out, look at the space and give you a written quote. No charge and no obligation.
Peace of mind
Guaranteed work
Our workmanship is guaranteed, with the terms set out in writing in your quote before anything starts. Materials carry their own manufacturer guarantees and we pass those on to you in full.
More of what we do
Our other services
Garden Design & Landscaping
A plan first, then the whole build, so the finished garden holds together as one piece of work.
Patios & Paving
Laid on proper foundations with the falls right, so it drains and it stays flat.
Stonework & Walls
Retaining walls, raised beds and steps, built in stone that suits the house.
Fencing & Gates
Posts set properly and timber that lasts, not something that leans after one gale.
Bespoke Garden Features
Pergolas, raised beds, terracing and lawns, built to the same standard as everything underneath them.