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Gravelling a Drive - advice please


Krin
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Hi

We have a fairly short but sloping drive which at the moment is very dead grass and weeds. However, as soon as it rains regularly it will become a quagmire, so we want to gravel it before winter. What is the best plan of action without resorting to costly things like JCB's and hardcore. We had thought to take off the top couple of inches, wait for a bit of rain to soften it up and then throw a few inches of gravel on top before running up and down it with the car to bed it in a bit. Does this sound like a recipe for weeds? Not sure about putting a membrane down because of the slope. I would think the gravel would drift downwards and I can envisage having a weekly shovel at the bottom to transfer it back to the top.

Thanks

Krin
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From my experience if you don't use hardcore and a membrane you really are throwing your money away!
A membrane prevents weeds rooting and makes them easy to deal with, while without hardcore, in a wet area, your gravil will quickly disappear into the mud.
Really depends on weather you are looking for a quick cosmetic 'fix', to sell for example, or you are looking for a long term solution.

Cheers
moulin
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If you can send me your e-mail address, I will forward the details and photos of what we did to our courtyard, which sounds similar to your drive just on a much bigger scale.

Look forward to hearing from you.

Kind regards

David and Sam (Dept 37)
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Depending on where you live and how much rain you get, if you do what you plan you will be back to square one by January or February!!!!

We had our drive "done" by a builder who used to be on this site and we were well and truly "done" by the "builder" - I believe he is now "doing time" for the way he ran his company. However, since then we have had the whole area redone by a French JCB owner who charged us less than half the original cost and has done a really, really good job. He did a sub-layer of very course black sand (don't know the proper name for it) which he tamped down with one of those big "bomper" machines, and then put a top layer of granite chippings on. Superb job and even with all the rain we have had over the last few weeks we haven't seem a single weed!!!

Coco
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