Advice for driveway

[PeteHT]

Hi all,

I'm struggling to decide what to do with some rough ground at the side of my house. I need this to be level to be used as a car parking / maintenance space, so my initial thoughts were to use concrete, although I'm unsure if using paving flags would be easier.



The ground is sloped away from the house (to the bottom of the picture) towards the garden. The ground is currently an uneven mix of old concrete and paving slabs. I was originally thinking to break up the ground and build a form, then have a local company come and pour/level the concrete. Apart from sloping for drainage, is there anything else I would need to allow for? There a couple of things I'm not sure about:

1) Can I leave the old concrete underneath, or do I need to do something with it?
2) Would I need to put a form down the house side, then once removed fill with something?

I'm after a relatively cheap solution that I can do pretty quickly. In the future I think I'll either move house or maybe build a garage here.

Thanks in advance

 

[wrathkeg]

there's loads of advice on this sort of thing (concrete and paving) on pavingexpert.com

Make sure you don't get the new level too close to any damp proof course.

 

[TerryMI5]

Im looking to do this to my drive too, will check that link out now!

 

[r896neo]

Personally i think slabs just aren't a great idea for drives. unless laid to a top notch spec they might crack.

If you want to have a stab yourself then budget block paving is very easy to do.

 

[Skimmers]

best thing you can do is to dig it all up and mark out 150mm below DPC
this will be the finished hight of the concrete soo you need to dig out for 4" for the concrete then 4" to 6" for hardcore reusing your old hardcore you have palled out.....

good plan to put in a sheet of rebar mesh into the wet concrete.
any water run off you want to contain in your own space so a aco drain into a soak away 5m from house. job done id get a digger and driver in for the day to dig it all out and dig soak away.

 

[Skimmers]

damm im good