Permeable Block Paved Driveway, Poole

Why it needed doing

The original concrete drive was laid some time in the 1970s straight onto the ground with no meaningful sub-base. It had cracked across the middle, sunk around 60mm at the garage threshold, and every time it rained the water ran towards the house rather than away from it.

Doing it properly

The reason cheap driveways fail is always the same: not enough excavation, and not enough sub-base. It is the invisible half of the quote and it is the half that matters.

We broke out the old slab completely – fourteen tonnes away – excavated to 350mm, and checked the formation level across the whole area before anything went back in. The sub-base is a clean angular stone rather than standard Type 1, because this is a permeable construction and the water has to get through it and into the ground rather than off into the road.

Edges are concrete haunched on both sides. An unrestrained edge is the second most common reason a block drive spreads and dips.

Why permeable

Since 2008 you have needed planning permission to lay more than five square metres of impermeable surface in a front garden that drains onto the highway. Building the drive permeable removes that problem entirely, and it also means the water that used to run at the house now soaks away where it lands.

The result

Six working days, and a drive that drains the right way for the first time in fifty years.