My front garden currently consists of 50% red chips where 2 / 3 cars park and lawn.
We have 4 cars so I want to lift the lawn which is about 2 car lengths, and put more chuckie stones down so that all 4 cars can park off-street.
The ground has lots of clay.
I am thinking of cutting the lawn up and lifting it and then put stones down on the whole driveway (missus wants to change from the red chuckies so something "nicer".
My plan is to lift the turf, then cover the full garden with type 1, batter it down and then weed control sheet and then new chuckies.
Thoughts, how much type 1 do I need, how easy is it to hire and use a whacker thingy? Is Type 1 good for natural drainage or does it prevent it?
Yes, I would like something nicer but
a. I dont have the budget
b. anyone I know with a drive of monobloc or slabs spends their summer weeding between the gaps. Or in my case, spending the summer weeding between the gaps of my dad's driveway!
Any help appreciated!
(When I did the red chuckies I lifted old slabs and then thew down stones that are bigger than type 1 and then the chuckies but nver whacked it down and now there are ruts in the driveway with the cars.)
|
Ours is gravel. It took twenty tonnes, but obviously it depends on length.
I topped it up in places after a few years with a couple of big bags.
|
Funnily enough I am currently planning/mulling over my driveway options. I have half block paving and half lose gravel and hate them both with a passion. I am probably going for fake York stone or if the council get iffy about permeability, resin bound (not bonded) stone.
But back to you, you need to investigate using plastic grids, then filling it with your chuckies. (WTF are chuckies?)
www.matsgrids.co.uk/35-gravel-driveways
Last edited by: Zero on Sat 31 Mar 18 at 08:56
|
Yeah!
WTF are 'chuckies" ??
Last edited by: Fullchat on Sat 31 Mar 18 at 12:20
|
Chuckie staines ( stones ) aka pebbles.
Scottish properties have "roans" too...
Last edited by: Runfer D'Hills on Sat 31 Mar 18 at 12:28
|
Slabs, bricks, loose stones - you need a foundation to all of these or they will sink, rut & look awlful in no time.
You probably need to dig down at least 30cms, Road metal - roller / at least vibrating plate, then smaller stones etc compacted.
All the driveways around me sunk - the few that did not sink were days in preparation before the slabs/bricks, stones were put down.
|
What is the best & cheapest way to kill weeds on block paving drives?
Our daughter and S.I.L. have just bought a rental house, not far from us, with a large expanse of aforesaid type of parking.
The house has been empty for at least 6 mo. and there are lots of weeds. We are helping with admin as they are not resident locally.
So far, we have tried 12 kilos of Tesco's table salt brushed over the driveway and are waiting to see if this historical method (salting an enemy's fields) has worked. TBH, applying weed-killer into all the joints from a pumped container, readily available from DIY sheds, is not only costly, but too back breaking for me.
I did find an on-line source of the EU banned stuff, Potassium Chlorate, but hesitated to entrust my card details to such a vendor. (The run off from the drive does not impact any other part of their, or any neighbour's, garden, so safe enough to use from a purely practical point of view)
|
I think liquid is all you've got really. Either in a spray bottle (which has he advantage of using less liquid) or a watering can.
I've used some pretty virulent stuff in the past and even then the weeds always come back. It seems to me you're just as well to use the environmentally safe stuff and regard wandering around with a watering can twice a year as one of the prices of ownership.
Roundup was the best bang for the buck that I found.
|
Maybe not the cheapest Roger but I have a bungalow with 105 m2 of block paving drive and patio and had it pressure washed and then 'soft' washed with chemical weedkiller. Around £2.50 m2.
Brought the block paving up beautifully and got rid of all the weeds for a smidge over £250 .Included resanding as well . I have two pressure washers but it would have taken me four times as long to do the job and not as well as the professionals.
I also had the bungalow softwashed at the same time . £400 to clean the dirt and algae from the painted walls. It had not been painted for 10 years. Difference was remarkable and saved £ 600 on the quote I got to repaint.
Sometimes it pays to get a professional in.
|
Five litres of white vinegar. .......9 bottles from Aldi...£2.25. A little bit dearer from Tecso.
Half a mug of washing up liquid. Cheapest will do..
One mugful of table salt. I keep 3 kilo bags for ice removal. Cheap again.
Pump spray from Wilkos....about six quid.
Shove it all in the spray, shake it a bit then leave 'til tomorrow to let all the salt dissolve. I have a lot of flagged paths, wait 'til it's dry and the Sun has gone off them. I get a garden chair out and sit down to pump and to spray, saves my bad back. Concentrate on the gaps. Existing weeds are brown by the following morning. Give bigger weeds an extra dose.
I do them twice a year.
|
>>
>> Five litres of white vinegar. .......9 bottles from Aldi...£2.25. A little bit dearer from Tecso.
>> One mugful of table salt. I keep 3 kilo bags for ice removal. Cheap again.
>> I do them twice a year.
Mind his place does smell like the local chippie all year round.
|
Thanks for all the tips, guys. I do intend to use my pressure washer to clean up the path, patio and parking area ,when the weeds are a bit under control.
We are overseeing the preparation of the house for rental (damp proof work, painting, carpets , keeping the grass cut - that WAS a job - and so on.
Both I and Dee believe - and hope for our kid's sake - that a nice tidy house gets nice tidy tenants.
Believe it or not, they offered on the house based on our viewing, although they did have a full survey before completing. It's a bit of a heavy weight on our shoulders that they relied so much on our thoughts.
I just hope it turns out to be a decent investment for them.
|
Roger,
A gardener to look after a rental property is a business expense.
You should look into that.
|
Nowt wrong with ponging like a chippy, Zero...sweetheart.
|
>>
>> Nowt wrong with ponging like a chippy, Zero...sweetheart.
>>
....I bet you say that to all the girls......
|
>> ....I bet you say that to all the girls......
>>
I might do when my tag gets removed....gotta be careful around wmmin until then !
|
|
Good foundation - yes; good drainage - yes ...... but, whatever you do, don't use pea shingle i.e. with small, rounded stones - it's like walking/driving on a beach. My mate changed from this awful stuff some years ago and replaced it with angular granite chippings which were miles more stable.
|
How do you equate how much type 1 and then surface gravel stones needed for a set area?
So if my driveway is 18m long and 6m wide and I want type 1 to 15cm depth, how do I calculate how many tons are needed?
This site www.robinsonquarry.co.uk/tonnage-calculator.php equates that to 32 tonnes of the stuff!! That right??
|
>>
>> So if my driveway is 18m long and 6m wide and I want type 1
>> to 15cm depth, how do I calculate how many tons are needed?
>>
That's 16 cubic metres. At say 1.9 tonnes per cubic metre that's about 30 tonnes.
|
I bit the bullet and bought Glysophate 360 in large quantities. IIRC about £80 for 4 X 4Ltr. Loads of suppliers on Ebay.
I have a backpack sprayer from Screwfix. Jobs a good un.
Only issue is that it is too good. Any wind drift will show on grass as will footprints of people who walk from the block paving onto the grass. The instructions are designed for crop sprayers so working out the ratios is a bit of a mare. My first attempt was a bit on the strong side but it brought the pavers up a treat.
|
"I bit the bullet and bought Glysophate 360 in large quantities."
That's what I would use. TBH, I am a little surprised that it is so readily available - this is the same strength (360g/l a.i.) as that available to professionals, and I always have to show my NPTC Spray Operator certificate at my local agricultural merchant; they make a note of the number for their records, and it is printed on my receipt..
"IIRC about £80 for 4 X 4Ltr. Loads of suppliers on Ebay."
At the usual rate of application (i.e. 5Ltr/ha), 16Ltr is sufficient to treat 3.2Ha i.e. about the area of 3 football pitches - this might be a bit more than Roger needs ;-)
Again, depending on Roger's total area, he may not need a knapsack sprayer - a 5Ltr hand-held one might be sufficient for the job.
Grasses are particularly susceptible to glyphosate and when I spray around the perimeter of our local football ground I have a helper carrying a board on the pitch-side as a shield. I use a 20Ltr knapsack sprayer and a lance fitted with a flat-fan nozzle. TBH, 20Ltr is a bit unwieldy, so I only fill it to 12Ltr.
"The instructions are designed for crop sprayers so working out the ratios is a bit of a mare"
I joined the crop protection industry in 1975 just as they had completed the change-over from imperial to metric measurements. Xml chemical in YLtr water per hectare is fine; I'm just glad that I never had to work it out in X fluid oz in Y gallons of water per acre.
|
|
I'm sure Ive recorded it somewhere once I'd worked out the ratios. What ratio Glysophate to water do you use in your sprayer? I'm a cc to Ltr type of guy :)
|
"What ratio Glysophate to water do you use in your sprayer?"
I have been using a product called 'Clinic Ace' - it is also contains 360g/ltr of glyphosate. I assume that it has the same recommendation as your product i.e. use 6ltr/ha on "Land not intended to bear vegetation".
To do the job properly, you should calibrate the sprayer, i.e. find out exactly how much water you are using at your normal working pace. My rate is 200ltr/ha of water. So I need 6Ltr of product in 200Ltr of water or, if I want to just use 12Ltr in my knapsack sprayer, that is 6Ltr x 12/200 = 360ml of product.
I helped a colleague out occasionally on the advice line of a garden product company selling glyphosate; the two commonest complaints were "I've used glyphosate on my lawn to kill the weeds - why has it killed the lawn as well?" and "I sprayed glyphosate on my weeds three days ago and they aren't dead yet - why hasn't it worked"?
The answers are, of course (if you read the label), glyphosate is a translocated herbicide which, when applied to green plant parts, is taken down to the roots; depending on weather conditions it can take 3 or 4 weeks before the weeds die. Glyphosate acts best when young weeds are growing actively, usually in the spring when the weather warms up.
|
Driveway help - Cliff Pope
