Case study
Sandstone driveway and front garden in Surbiton
- Location
- Surbiton, Surrey (KT6)
- Timescale
- Two weeks
- Services used
- Sandstone driveway and path, linear drain and soakaway, brick step, sleeper planter, fence adjustment, planting
- Approximate value
- Available on request
The brief
A frontage that had to take a second car
The front of this Surbiton house had a concrete driveway and path, an old step at the front door and a bush taking up space. The owners wanted the whole frontage redone, and they wanted room on the drive for an extra car.
That meant the new paving had to take the weight of vehicles, not just people, and the fence line had to move to make the opening wider.
The build
A drive built for daily traffic
The old concrete drive, path and step were broken out and taken away along with the bush, and the ground dug down to depth. MOT Type 1 was brought in and compacted to the right level and profile for both the drive and the path.
The paving is Camel Buff Indian sandstone in 600 x 900mm slabs, around 43 sqm of it across the drive and the small front garden. For a driveway, each slab went down on a full cement bed with a paving primer on the back, which gives the bond strength needed to cope with cars turning on it.
Rain off a drive this size has to go somewhere. A linear channel drain runs across the front edge of the driveway, draining down into a soakaway built into the MOT sub-base. The paving is edged in red brick, and the same brick was used to build the new step at the front door.
The existing fence line was altered to widen the drive for the extra car, and an oak sleeper planter runs along the front of the house. The olive tree was pruned back into shape, and a new quarter circle bed was cut in for planting.
The result
A front garden that does the job
The house now has a warm, even stone frontage with room for two cars, a drain that keeps water off the slabs, and a proper path and step up to the front door, with planting kept in the right places.
Services used on this project
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