Bonded Gravel

martyc · 20 Apr 2008

Anyone experience using this?
The front of my house is split into a small lawn and a concrete area which can park one car.
I am looking @ options basically getting rid of the small lawn so i can get a second car off the road.
Bonded gravel looks really good...can anyone offer advice experience putting this down...should i take up both the concrete base and the lawn or could i lay on top of the concrete say?
(id put down regular gravel only i have 2 cats who would use it as a giant litter tray)

Marty

JohnD · 20 Apr 2008

you can put it on top of concrete

if you lay it without a firm base you will need an awful lot of it, it is expensive, and the car will sink into it (it is a bit flexible)

you need a fall so you can pressure-wash the dirt off, as it gets dirty.

I have not used it myself but there is some in my high street round trees, and I saw it at Chelsea.

If clean, level and no gaps it looks good.

martyc · 20 Apr 2008

Cheers John,
Did a bit of reading appears to be 2 types mainly..bonded and bound..bonded being mixed thoroughly with glue and it allows water to drain through once down and cured....bound is the one you can"bind" to an existing base.
So im not sure if i could mix both styles, i think id be best take up the concrete.

Ill do a bit more reading...thing s im in ireland and ive only seen this abroad.
Marty

ins9681303 · 23 Apr 2008

Hi,

Like you i was thinking of the bonded gravel for a drive surface. I think it does have a few advantages , damaged parts can be repaired without showing, it can be in a few different colours so patterns etc are a possibility but when investigating it i found 1 main disadvantage with the example drive i went to see - it gets slippery when wet! Prehaps it is possible to have a less shiny resin with the gravel which may help but it did make me think twice...

I hope this helps

PWR · 20 Apr 2009

i had this installed in my second house about 9-10 years ago. I think from Ideal home exhibition. i don't want to put you off, it looks good new but If you plan to put a car on it be carefull not to turn wheels too often when car is still as it rips up gravel and you will be left with bald patches (my experience)Though It might be a better product now, mine was different to what you see around trees in streets as it was rough gravel with not much resin. As for repair I could not find any supplier for the resin or the gravel at that time. 10 years down the line hopefully the product is much better and more widely available.

r896neo · 20 Apr 2009

I also like it but saw some guys working with it and its difficult to handle and something i'd say leave it to people who are used to working with it.

amurphy1 · 2 Jun 2009

Hello

Just read this thread and thought I'd let you know that there is new legislation on taking up your front lawn, called SUDS....I think that's the name, try googling it for more info! We had our front lawn took up for my car and thought we could just concrete it but you can't. You have to use a material that allows the water to soak into the ground instead of running into the drains. If you can't show that your trying to redirect the water from running into the drains by using paving that allows the water to soak through or gravel and tyre tracks, then you can pay up to £150 trying to get planning permission and they told us it could take up to 8 weeks.

If you go into your local Build Center, they have some leaflets on it and it tells you what products you can and cannot use. My local is Wolverhampton but I think they have branches all over, if not find them here: www.buildcenter.co.uk

Hope this helps!

Ali

r896neo · 2 Jun 2009

Did you by any chance just come across this thread because that's your job as a sales rep for build centre!! and then come up with some tenuous story about our own driveway being done.

gday2uk · 2 Jun 2009

r896neo said:
Did you by any chance just come across this thread because that's your job as a sales rep for build centre!! and then come up with some tenuous story about our own driveway being done.

What a suspicious mind

diynot

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Bonded Gravel

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