Browse Forums Paving & Concreting 1 Feb 10, 2010 9:32 pm Howdee everyone, I'm about to start building my first house and it's an exciting time for me. Everything is pretty much sorted out except for what I'm going to do with my driveway. Because I'm on a sub divided block of land, i have a length of about 30 meters to try and cover which will reach from the road to my car port. It's obviously quite a vast area and much larger than the average driveway. I'm on a very tight budget and really just looking for any ideas that people have as cheaper alternatives. My initial thought is to just lay down some stone and that will at least get me started, but idealy i'd love to have a sealed drive way of sort, but so far am unable to find anything that's going to cost less than 15k for the area i need to do. I've heard people talking about product which is like stones, mixed in with a glue or something that gets put down and it's all solid but is meant to be cheap to do? I have no idea what it's called and i haven't seen what it looks like, just heard of it. I've also played with the idea of DIY, i'm not afraid to get my hands dirty, but i've currently got zero trade skills although i'm a quick learner and reckon i'll be able to pick it up pretty easily. The driveway has a slight fall off leading out to the road, so it has a natural run off for water etc. so i don't think i'd need drainage or anything. So any ideas or recommendations for a driveway this size would be great. Cheers. Re: 30 Meters of driveway - Seeking advice on what to do? 2Feb 10, 2010 9:38 pm Ok so you have a distance of 30mtrs but thw width is ? So it is 3mtr. 30 x 3 = 90, 90 sq x $110 sq mtr = $9900... Exposed aggregate would cost you about $9900 Where you are coming from is where you are going to... Re: 30 Meters of driveway - Seeking advice on what to do? 3Feb 10, 2010 9:42 pm Our driveway is going to be about 100 to 100 sqm. . . we're going all-out and having a road-base driveway. . . it's going to cost us an absolute FORTUNE (about $2K we reckon). Ok, so it's not flash. . . but it'll stop us getting bogged in clay every time we come home! Re: 30 Meters of driveway - Seeking advice on what to do? 4Feb 10, 2010 9:49 pm The width varies, at the road end there's about 6 meters, then it slowly srinks down to about 3.5 meters(over about 25 meters), then widens again to 6.5 meters. I just did a VERY rough sketch of how it kind of looks. Like ⋅ Add a comment ⋅ Pin to Ideaboard ⋅ This is no where near scale, but gives you an idea of what i'm talking about. So at the front of the driveway, i don't really need to do the whole width, just the width of the crossover which is not in the middle of the driveway, it's actually only at the lower half of it. Re: 30 Meters of driveway - Seeking advice on what to do? 5Feb 10, 2010 9:51 pm Righty I've heard people talking about product which is like stones, mixed in with a glue or something that gets put down and it's all solid but is meant to be cheap to do? I have no idea what it's called and i haven't seen what it looks like, just heard of it. Cheers. It sounds like the sort of paving / stoning matt did in his backyard... Hmmm, let me see if I can find a pic for you (no promises ) Re: 30 Meters of driveway - Seeking advice on what to do? 6Feb 10, 2010 9:57 pm Righty - Where in aussie are you? and will you be there in 10 minutes when I have finished a sketchup? Where you are coming from is where you are going to... Re: 30 Meters of driveway - Seeking advice on what to do? 8Feb 10, 2010 10:01 pm Cool Where you are coming from is where you are going to... Re: 30 Meters of driveway - Seeking advice on what to do? 9Feb 10, 2010 10:15 pm Where you are coming from is where you are going to... Re: 30 Meters of driveway - Seeking advice on what to do? 10Feb 10, 2010 10:38 pm About 150sq mtrs and $15k Where you are coming from is where you are going to... Re: 30 Meters of driveway - Seeking advice on what to do? 11Feb 10, 2010 10:43 pm yeah, that's about what i was thinking, and was also the price i was afraid of! Haha So that's why i'm trying to think of other alternatives to concrete or some other cost saving ideas that people have done. I simply can't afford the extra 15k at this point in time, i'm trying to get away with it for about half that btw was that done in google sketchup? Re: 30 Meters of driveway - Seeking advice on what to do? 12Feb 10, 2010 10:50 pm Yep... I priced exposed but about 9k for grey conc broom finish Where you are coming from is where you are going to... Re: 30 Meters of driveway - Seeking advice on what to do? 13Feb 10, 2010 10:53 pm you could have told me you only want to spend that much Where you are coming from is where you are going to... Re: 30 Meters of driveway - Seeking advice on what to do? 14Feb 10, 2010 10:58 pm Haha, well i didn't have an exact price in mind To be honest, i'm just looking for the cheapest possible alternative that looks "OK". The house is all entry spec and is a very run of the mill 3bed 2bath kind of thing. Not the dream house, just the start of my portfolio. So I'm trying to find the cheapest alternative but something a bit better than just crushed stone. Re: 30 Meters of driveway - Seeking advice on what to do? 16Feb 11, 2010 9:34 am Granitic Sand!! That's what I was thinking of! Re: 30 Meters of driveway - Seeking advice on what to do? 17Feb 11, 2010 9:44 am We had a long driveway when we lived on acreage. We put Koppers logs along each side of it, we fixed them down by drilling 3 holes along the length (each end and in the middle) and hammered through a metal stake into the ground. They did not budge at all. Then we used small stones to form the driveway base which got wacker packed. We also planted cocos palms along the whole length on each side. It looked really good and cost about $1000 (including the palms) but this was back in 1996 Blog: http://bluemistkids.blogspot.com "Never be afraid to try something new. Remember, amateurs built the ark, and professionals built the Titanic." Re: 30 Meters of driveway - Seeking advice on what to do? 18Feb 11, 2010 9:32 pm ooohhhhhh. . . I like your idea of drilling holes in logs and staking them! It's all a little bit Buffy isn't it!!! I was thinking of having pine sleepers down the side of our roadbase, but we still need to get the ride-on mower over it to cut the grass (when we eventually get some) on the other side. . . how do we do that? have a little ramp? Re: 30 Meters of driveway - Seeking advice on what to do? 19Feb 13, 2010 12:02 am Hels We had a long driveway when we lived on acreage. We put Koppers logs along each side of it, we fixed them down by drilling 3 holes along the length (each end and in the middle) and hammered through a metal stake into the ground. They did not budge at all. Then we used small stones to form the driveway base which got wacker packed. We also planted cocos palms along the whole length on each side. It looked really good and cost about $1000 (including the palms) but this was back in 1996 Sounds like a nice idea, but I'm unsure as so how well i'm going to take a wheely bin down stones every week for rubbish collection, haha. Does anyone have any other new ideas for a solid compound driveway for around 5k? haha Re: 30 Meters of driveway - Seeking advice on what to do? 20Feb 16, 2010 5:58 pm Righty Hels We had a long driveway when we lived on acreage. We put Koppers logs along each side of it, we fixed them down by drilling 3 holes along the length (each end and in the middle) and hammered through a metal stake into the ground. They did not budge at all. Then we used small stones to form the driveway base which got wacker packed. We also planted cocos palms along the whole length on each side. It looked really good and cost about $1000 (including the palms) but this was back in 1996 Sounds like a nice idea, but I'm unsure as so how well i'm going to take a wheely bin down stones every week for rubbish collection, haha. Does anyone have any other new ideas for a solid compound driveway for around 5k? haha for around 150sqm you could get plain concrete for 6k I am building in claymore NSW and this is shown in the building envelope plan. … 0 10017 Hi everyone! This is my first time posting here, and I'm looking for some advice regarding my house construction project in North Kellyville. I… 0 6693 There is no reason why building contract reconciliation cannot be done prior to handover, if the builder won't do it get someone to do it for you. Why would you pay for… 3 6680 |