Moving in with no concrete paths/driveway

Hi everyone
So our build is hopefully coming to an end and i have started thinking about packing up our rental ready to move.

We won’t have any landscaping/driveway done when this happens. What do people generally put down over the soil to try and stop walking through it when moving in and until you have a path?

Crushed rock? That is what I have with my build down in Victoria. It was actually laid down due to the requirements for all weather access however due to the difficulty of finding good and reliable concreters, it might need to serve as my "footpath" for a good 6 months or more.

we moved in without paving
after the first winter, my wifes car was slipping around so much it ended up under the verandah
could not get a concreter to even quote 6.5m x 19m so a good job for someone
ended up getting crushed rock
never did get around to getting concrete
25 years later new owners 4 times on still have crushed rock but a different colour

We have crushed recycled brick. Works well.

just spend the 2k and get the driveway poured lol. Did you over extend yourself so much that that's going to be out of the question?

2k lol

average setback of a home from the cross over - 5m
average width of driveway (to match double car garage) 5m - usually less overall due to taper to crossover.
Driveway size - 5m*5m = 25sqm

Quote i got last week-
$75p/sqm - plain concrete
$85p/sqm - Coloured concrete
$95 p/sqm - exposed ag

Prices in order of above for a standard driveway
$1875
$2125
$2375

So yes, 2k for a driveway.

Lol indeed.

are you one of the suckers that paid their builder +6k for a driveway?

like i said, i arranged 4 concreters to quote, took day off work, none showed up
next week gave 2 a second chance as they has reasonable excuses, plus 1 more, again none showed up
so it is not a question of money, it is jerks who say they will come and quote and then dont show up
if they are too busy, just say so
on those calculations mine would have been close to $10,000 job

Also didnt realise that somone necro'd this post. Its no longer relevant

5m wide is cutting is cutting it fine.

So your not including the crossover as the driveway?

Does that price include excavation?

Does it include pump hire or will the concreter get the truck to drive over the steel reinforcement to place the concrete?

Where do you live that the rates are so low.

I guarantee you aren’t working with quality tradesman at that price.

5m wide is not cutting a fine line at all. It is the width of 99% of driveways in every street of every growth suburb in Melbourne where volume builders build. They're generally narrower in established suburbs. I'm going to assume it to be similar in every other state that has a growth suburb with standard blocks where the standard set back is 4-5m. I could go an google street to make a point, but I'm fairly comfortable that I'm not wrong.

In Melbourne the crossover and paths are already there as part of the estate. Same as per established suburbs. The developers take care of that and is not part of the block you buy. We don't pay for this. These are council property when developers are done with the estate too.

Excavation? The blocks are cut by the builders when they put a house there. There is sufficient drop from the garage to the cross over to form up and pour a slab to be the required thickness 99% of the time. SO no that doesn't include excavation, because again its sorted. You could argue that the excavation IS paid for in the price of your site works, but that's splitting hairs. There is no ADDITIONAL excavation to pay for for a driveway 99% of the time.

Every drive way I've seen poured in every growth suburb I've lived in for the last 20 years has been poured by a truck with a pump. Its cheap and efficient. I don't think I've seen anything else to be honest and the only time I've seen a mixer is when the bricks are going up.

I live in Melbourne. Those rates are the upper middle of the range from 5 quotes. I chose that guy because he's done work on my other three homes across a range of various needs (perimeter paths, drive ways, footings for planters and slabs for granny flats) The pricing from this guy has always been the upper middle of my range of quotes over the last 20 years and his work has stood the test of time. Their work around the other homes I've seen has also stood the test of time. Its neat, clean, no shortcuts like whacking reo strait on the ground cos they CBF using chairs etc.

You can guarantee me, can you lol?

I'm not your average forum member that doesn't know their elbow from a box gutter.

What a joke.

If your a volume builder where you are offering multiple jobs or having more than just the driveway done yes the driveway can possibly cost that much.

In the Hunter Valley the rates generally start at $90 for plain. Volume builders are always looking for concreters because the rates are low. Usually it’s young guys starting out. I am constantly hearing of jobs needing to be repaired. It’s not hard for a decent concreter to get a better rate.

For 24m2 (for 25m2 you need another sheet of steel.

Concrete 3m3 - $600 (you would likely pay extra cartage on that too)
Steel - $150
Pump - $600
Base Sand - $50
(These are low figures)

$1875 - $1400 = $475

$432 excl GST

$432 lol? Should be

Doable? Yes but with too many caveats. eg. no strip drain, no excavation, etc

Unlikely a one off private owner could get this price if it is driveway only. Offer paths and footings or more driveways in the same area and it’s a different story.

Btw my response was because your original post was dismissive and assumed everyone’s situation is the same as yours.

The quote i gave you was by a private contractor, not a volume builder. Volume builders are margin hungry. Their quote for a driveway only was >6K for exposed ag. that was a firm laugh in their face moment.

Whether the private contractors line up jobs on the same day to make effective use of resources is not my problem. Its theirs. They run a business and will do what's appropriate for them. The quote I have is written and firm for driveway only. That said, I'm looking at getting an additional 100m around the house, which I'm sure he'll be happy to hear about, but beside the point.

I suspect that perhaps some of the concreter reliability issues home owners experience are related to when they give people these low quotes and jobs fall through on a particular day making them less lucrative to show up for.


Don't need a strip drain on all jobs, or excavations for that matter. While you might feel my original post was dismissive, the original point of it is still relevant - why leverage yourself to the point where you don't even have basic functionality (a driveway) for your home before you move in? 2k or 3k even 4k is really irrelevant. While edge cases will exist where somone has a long driveway or they are rural and the price would be astronmical, a large majority of people are building standard volume builder homes in estates where blocks are standard shapes and sizes with standard setbacks etc.

I would agree with you on the leveraging point.

But my point is that I would say a good quality <$2000 driveway is an edge case in most parts of Australia (at least in the Hunter Valler).

You made an assumption that is all it would cost the OP.

I don't think it's that much of an edge case mate. Maybe the hunter valley is the edgecase lol.

My source of information is my own experience in getting driveways done, my friends driveways and familiys driveways and the converastions I've had with plenty of my neighbours over the last 20 years about the work they've had done.

I've worked out you're a concreter and get that youve got a wealth of experience but Driveways don't have to be expensive, and good trades aren't always expensive either. It's pouring a drive way, not rocket surgery.

-deleted

your passive aggressive post is lost on me given the image wont load. Whatever it is, it's unlikely to make you "right". My guess is it supports some confirmation bias though

Sorry, I was just being cheeky. I deleted it because it’s not pertinent to the conversation.

Maybe my case is an edge case. It’s certainly possible.

Anecdotal evidence is all that either of us has.

I’m sorry if my initial post upset you.

So maybe it's different in Sydney but our builder wanted $10,000 for a 5.5m x 5m driveway. We decided to do it post handover anyway but I still don't expect the prices to be anywhere near $2,000. I hope i'm wrong but that does sound unrealistically cheap.