Greetings folks........ I'm in the process of buying a new house, and I'm planning to replace some of the useless grassed front lawn with a driveway/hard standing for the Disco........

Anyone got any recommendations for the surface...... basically, it's gotta be oil-resistant (obviously), comfy to lie on & pretty enough for the wife's liking.

My thoughts so fay:

1. Paving slabs - cheap & DIY, but they'd have to be thick ones or they'll crack under the weight (of the Disco, not ME!!!)
2. Gravel - cheap & DIY, but damned uncomfortable!!!
3. Tarmac - smooth, but you can't use oil-remover on it (or it dissolves) and it's not very pretty
4. Block paving - expensive, but looks nice
5. Concrete - smooth & cleanable, but not very pretty so she'll probably veto it..... maybe I could put pretty edging stones on it or something
6. That funky, bouncy rubber stuff (made from recycled tyres?) they use on kiddie's playgrounds - must be really comfy, though dropping a lump hammer on it could prove 'interesting'

Cheers

Dunk

How about those 18 inch hollow concrete blocks, the type with two hollow sections.

Lay them so they hollows lie vertically and fill them with soil and plant grass in them.

Looks nice, comfy to lie on and any oil stains eventually grow out. (Cats & dogs will like it too!)

I believe they use this method round office blocks &c where access may be required for fire engines &c, but it needs to look nice.

Mine is gravel, partly to absorb oil "just in case" (though neither of mine actually leave trails - yet!) but mainly so I can use the pressure washer on them - which I do regularly - without having to clean the driveway every time as well. The driveway drains into a French drain which takes the water away.

Option 6 - - there's definitely a cartoon in that waiting to be drawn

Gravel will also swallow any fasteners you drop on it !!

I use estate agent "For Sale" signs as crawler boards when working on my gravel drive.

Trolley jacks are a PITA too.

Or

7. Those square waffle board like 'tiles'? Supports the vehicle but lets the grass (re)grow through and the oil soak away.

Agree - gravel drives are a PITA.

Axle stands sink into tarmac drives on hot days, plus weld spatter sticks to the tarmac and makes your drive go rusty when it rains (ask HFH's missus about that one).

Pavers would need to be thick to take the weight of a trolley jack......

I was wonding what effect painting pavers with Thomsons water seal would have - would it make them oil proof???

Funnily enough I'm in the same situation - I'm moving house and want to extend the driveway!

Jon

Hmmmm...... we have something like that here at work for a car-park overflow, but with the amount of time my 'play' Disco spends off the road (see my 'Wheel Bearing Woes' thread), the grass under the motor would probably die off anyway

Good point on the jet-washing, though.... my current drive is tarmac, and it's always a pain having to wash the drive after washing the mud off the car - maybe I'll leave it as it is, and just park on the front garden

Concrete's currently my favourite option - just need to find a way to may it look pretty - I seem to remember there are companies who'll 'texture' a concrete drive to make it look like block-paving?...... that, combined with a coloured concrete must appease SWMBO

Also if you have Tarmac I understand that diesel will attack it over time if you have a spill...

I will probably concrete mine one day but at the moment the road to my house is only gravel so there doesn't seem much point doing the driveway in anything else

If you go for paving slabs, use an industrial slab and not a garden patio slab. Garden slabs are around 35-37mm thick normally which is not enough to weight bare a landy. Industrial slabs are produced in 50mm and 62-65mm variants (personally I'd go for the later). Plain old grey slabs are far better than any coloured industrial or patio slab. Repeated jet washing/ scrubbing will lift the colour from the concrete.



You'll lose all the fixings you drop and gravel will oil stain and consolidate



Block paving made by some companies can be quite porous thus soaks up oil quite well. Again repeated scrubbing /jet washing will lift the colour out.

Dave

I am in a similar position, but i want a surface that will double up as a patio, as well as hard standing. Have a look at textured contrete, it does double the price of concrete, but it looks nice. And her indoors will love it....

Oz

My neighbour has just had textured concrete put down his drive to look like block-paving. If you want, I can email you a photo after the weekend? It looks alright.

The only problem I find with any form of laid concrete on a drive (especially when it's a speciallised finished) is that if you have a problem with household services running under the drive, the whole surface has to be replaced. Slabs and blocks can be lifted in sections and re-laid

What about paving slabs on to of concrete? best of both worlds.

HO about a properly screeded coloured concrete- a nice red or soething. you will get a really nice smooth surface which is impervious to just about anything and won't get ****ed up by heavy weights- and if you edged it with some paving there's no reason why it coun't look quite nice.

If your talking about practicality for working on a motor then it has to be concrete. If you need to compromise I'd go for decent thick concrete slabs, but make a prober job of laying them, i.e. excavate, 10" of hardcore, compact with a hired thwacker plate, sand, compacted, them slabs. Then they will not break as they will have a decent compact surface to rest on. But you will need ~ 10" of hardcore thinking back to a simialr conversation I had with a civil engineer.

Adrian

Trench and footings round the edge and you can add some walls and a roof later

now there is a good idea, build the drive 'inside' add a fishpond to be drained later for use as a pit...

Nice idea

The concrete is spayed with dye/colouring while wet and then printed with large pads to make the pattern, many different patterns. You are supposed to reseal suface once a year I think, to stop the colour fading.

As with all these options its what underneath that really makes a difference, ie top soil removed and a good layer of well compacted hard core (150mm preferably), and you need to think about where all your surface water is going to go.

If you are going to park in the same place, how about 2 rows of slabs 900mm wide with gravel down the middle for the oil drips could leave the grass either side then. To drive on you need the slabs bedded down on a lean dry concrete mix.

Andy

infact if you live on a hill put a pond in the drive & one at the top of the hill & plumb them together. hey presto hydro-electric power for the angle grinder...

am i far enough OT yet?

Block paving is strong and will take the weight of the disco no problem you can spray a product over it to stop oil from getting into the stones/block but it must be laid properly on a good base or if it sinks it look crap.

http://www.bradstone.com/garden/index.html...dex.shtml&2

50mm slabs are the easyest and most 50mm are designed to take a fire tender (30t) get them from a builder merchant as B&Q will not stock heavy ones.

Tarmac can have chemicals to change its colour and resistance. A normal drive spec tarmac will not coup with a Disco's weight and will creep in a year or two and don't go for less than 14mm stone or your mud tyres will rip it up on hot days SMA is the most common but may depend on the size of drive as to cost.

Concrete. Any colour, any strength and you can have it installed with cobble style finish which will put up with anything your disco can drop on it and its easy to touch up if you need to. but you will need to have it designed or basicly 100mm/150mm thick and some A593 mesh should take a disco no problem.

Yep..... looks like concrete's the way to go - like the cobble finish - that'll probably go down well with SWMBO too...... time to start budgeting!!

Dunk