Hi all,
I'm planning to turn my front garden into the typical modern parking lot.
It's on a slight slope and was previously a mixture of crazy paving & flower beds that relied on natural drainage.
As I hope you can tell from my artistic efforts below, I intend to;
- Pave down the footpath and along the front of the house, I'm using typical budget Riven 600x600x32mm slabs on a wet mortar bed. This base is sloped away from the house and I'm already aware that its close(ish) to the DPC.
- Dig a trench (light green) about 1ft deep (?) and 1ft wide (?) along the 'bottom'. To be filled with coarse gravel.
- Dig a trench for the retaining wall , put a concrete base in, build low wall on top to bring level with existing block driveway.
- Use a whacker on the centre area, then lay membrane and fill with gravel.
- Plant a hedge in the remaining flower bed along the front and shrubs in the other bits.
Here are the photo's from both directions, with and without annotations.
My questions are:
1) Will that trench be enough? (I can't see how else I can route water, without digging up the whole block-paved driveway to join with the drain from the road, which I believe is underneath it.)
2) Will the parking area still drain any water once it's been whackered if I use a permeable membrane (or no membrane at all?)
3) Along the front, i'll be reducing my DPC clearance from about 170mm to about 125mm (although I note that whoever laid the block paving has already reduced it to about 90mm along the side of the house). How criminal is this?
4) I ordered new Riven slabs in 'buff' from Homebase. But upon unpacking them I've realised they are actually a strange mouldy green/brown colour, is this normal? It seems to scratch off the surface like its just discolouring from storage?
Really grateful in advance for anyone's help
I'm planning to turn my front garden into the typical modern parking lot.
It's on a slight slope and was previously a mixture of crazy paving & flower beds that relied on natural drainage.
As I hope you can tell from my artistic efforts below, I intend to;
- Pave down the footpath and along the front of the house, I'm using typical budget Riven 600x600x32mm slabs on a wet mortar bed. This base is sloped away from the house and I'm already aware that its close(ish) to the DPC.
- Dig a trench (light green) about 1ft deep (?) and 1ft wide (?) along the 'bottom'. To be filled with coarse gravel.
- Dig a trench for the retaining wall , put a concrete base in, build low wall on top to bring level with existing block driveway.
- Use a whacker on the centre area, then lay membrane and fill with gravel.
- Plant a hedge in the remaining flower bed along the front and shrubs in the other bits.
Here are the photo's from both directions, with and without annotations.
My questions are:
1) Will that trench be enough? (I can't see how else I can route water, without digging up the whole block-paved driveway to join with the drain from the road, which I believe is underneath it.)
2) Will the parking area still drain any water once it's been whackered if I use a permeable membrane (or no membrane at all?)
3) Along the front, i'll be reducing my DPC clearance from about 170mm to about 125mm (although I note that whoever laid the block paving has already reduced it to about 90mm along the side of the house). How criminal is this?
4) I ordered new Riven slabs in 'buff' from Homebase. But upon unpacking them I've realised they are actually a strange mouldy green/brown colour, is this normal? It seems to scratch off the surface like its just discolouring from storage?
Really grateful in advance for anyone's help