Awkward driveway resurfacing options

Looking for some advice about driveway surfacing as ours is in a bit of a mess.

We have a shared driveway, servicing 6 cottages, adjacent to the canal.

hopefully this pic works:

top left corner is the canal running NE/SW, bottom right is the start of the row of cottages in the same orientation.
You can see the driveway curve off the main street (main street in top right, running NW/SE). between the road and where it starts to curve toward the cottages is permitted access from scottish canals. They don’t maintain it, but want to agree to what we do with it. That part is level.
the curve toward the cottages slopes at somewhere between 15-20 degrees, then curves at the top 90deg toward the south west and runs along the front of the cottages.

originally, a long long time ago it was cobbled, in one area where the surface has eroded, these are exposed,along with the asphalt that was laid on top of them, and the gravel that was laid on top of that.

Canals want something that will not create a point source discharge, so a permeable surface (ignoring the very old asphalt layer) we want something that’s going to last more than a few years.

plan will be to dig out the slope to remove the old asphalt and get down to something to key into. We will need to provide drainage from where the car sits across the top of the slope to direct it down the side of the slope and provide some sort of storm catch pit at the bottom of the slope, as currently rainwater rips a channel down the slope.

however, what to surface it with? gravel isn’t going to work. resin bound maybe, but there’s a lot of turning potentially tearing it up at the top of the slope, will it cope?
I did think of those concrete reinforcement things used for grassy areas, but I’m not convinced that it would work well either.
tarmac would be the obvious choice, but I doubt canals would agree to that.

would be nice to not have something that’s a literal ice rink in winter too. we put a top coat of tar and chippings over the gravel a couple of years ago and while it stabilised things a bit and lasted about two years, it collected water downlsope, which made for a couple of squeaky bum moments sliding toward the canal bank.

any suggestions welcome.

thanks

Tarmac but with an ‘edge’ of a drainage swale or those underground water crates?

No personal experience, but…

Those interlocking concrete bricks that have gaps for grass/gravel and drainage

Porous tarmac or concrete (I think that’s a bit specialist… Like the exposed aggregate drive I’d love to have)

Or could you go for a fireroad style compacted drive of whatever they are made from, that must be the cheapest option and wouldn’t be loose like gravel.

As long as nothing heavier than 3.5t is going to use it a 10mm DBM asphalt 40mm thick surface course overlaid what you have would work..

Don’t go for Porous asphalt unless you plan on carrying out regular maintenance to it. If its not maintained properly the water gets trapped in it and expanded in winter ripping it apart.

how many Square meters are you looking at resurfacing

We have type 1 MOT which is the substrate they put down usually before tarmacing. It is a mixture of crushed rock and graded finings so is designed to mesh together – once compacted and rollered it stays put, unlike gravel, it is also relatively cheap as it is commonly used on all building sites – our house sits on a metre high heap of the stuff.

If it were me I’d try to get it back down to the cobbles, get more cobbles to edge it, this is hard work but cost little and boost your house value, you could edge it up with the broken up surface you take off and if you don’t need to replace any cobbles the cost is only sweat…no wait..you also saved a gym membership.

To surface I can’t see past edging and filling, gives a nice clean edge and keeps the surface in place and stops it breaking up, any small aggregate will work if it’s done well, looks like small gravel but tightens down and gives a good surface when you drive on it, I like whin.

where does any water drain to now? does it soak away ok if no hard drain fitted? if it goes into canal i can see why CS would be concerned in which case might need some attenuation crates and a flow restrictor in the D shaped grass area? I think the cobbles sound like a good option to repair /extend we have been putting the drive off for 20 years so far!!

Thanks.
Edging and filling. Excuse my ignorance, but is that filling and compacting between the cobbles? Not really considered cobbles, though they’d likely protect from the overconfident delivery drivers that we get stopping at the top of the slope before attempting the 90 turn!

Only concern would be frosty descents in winter. Or would there be sufficient grip from the ‘grout’

Get the drainage right and you can surface with pretty much whatever you want.
Forestry tracks are just crush and run with inch to dust on top to bind it all and rolled in. Ditches are huge though.

where does any water drain to now? does it soak away ok if no hard drain fitted

Mostly soaks in, though heavy rain it runs down the surface and out on to the main road, round the bend at the bottom of the slope.
There’s quite a slope down to the canal, and it’s well vegetated, so any run off making its way down to the canal would quickly soak into there.

Thanks.
Edging and filling. Excuse my ignorance, but is that filling and compacting between the cobbles? Not really considered cobbles, though they’d likely protect from the overconfident delivery drivers that we get stopping at the top of the slope before attempting the 90 turn!

Only concern would be frosty descents in winter. Or would there be sufficient grip from the ‘grout’

Sorry, no just stabilising the current surface, putting an edge in and packing with an aggregate that tightens down, a vibrating plate compactor just speeds the process up and gives you an instant drive….I’m visualising it as having a few layers over the cobbles at the minute, if it’s never been tarred and you can loosen the surface..and the cobbles are intact you might have a perfectly good last forever road under there for free.

I can’t work out where the slope is??

If you clear off to the cobbles layer you are a bit limited in what you then put on, aggregate won’t key into cobbles, how about….if you lift the cobbles to put the road in…use the cobbles around your house? I like cobbles by the way.

https://www.pavingexpert.com/permabl1

Possibly worth a read…..

No idea if suitable OP but it sounds like you’re referring to https://www.grasscrete.com/docs/paving/grasscrete.html

We had this installed along our event sites so we could unload artics without tearing the grass up & it’s still going strong years later.

It also mentions ‘water environment’ with figures for drainage

yeah, it was grasscrete that I was thinking of, though I’m not sure how it would cope with surface water runoff, whether that would gouge out the filled bits or not.

I think, from the responses so far, the important thing with drainage is to catch and direct it. so drain the top of the slope and drain the sides of the driveway along the slope, with the drive itself having enough camber to direct surface water flow off to the sides.

the next challenge for a surfacing material is to cope with driving on it, not so much driving, but the turn at the top of the slope at the cottages. you can maintain speed from the main road up the drive and up the slope, but have to slow right down to make the turn at the top of the slope. The combination of slowing and turning the wheels tends to grind the driveway surface up.
when we moved in, one of the contractors who was renovating some of the cottages in the row put down a sub base and laid quartz chippings down. compacted them too. I think that lasted about 18 month before it’d torn up and washed down the slope.

we also see a lot of frost expansion on the surface as it it. it gets very soft after a thaw, increasing the wear. This is what was leading me to a bound solution, rather than compacted stone. and also maybe deep set cobbles may be more difficult to rip up? I’m not sure.

as an aside, any recommendations for a driveway specialist around glasgow?

Type 1MOT will hold water unless it’s go a thicker layer over it. I had this pending doing my drive properly, but covered it with a heft layer of fines (ripperd up tarmac), which then beds in.

As was said up there, get drainage right and then worlds you’re oyster. Why not put a good soak away in and the acro around whatever you put down. Yes it’s a bit of digging but no more expensive.

I was also warned off by many a subcontractor not to lay porus material, especially if around trees – as they fill with dead stuff and then it just ends up running off anyway.

by all accounts, a well laid block pave – it’s chepaer than anything else and easily repaired.

Any chance you could all club together and buy the land off the person where the black car is parked?

Then you could put a new access into the main road, put down whatever road surface you like, and sod what waterways wants because you’re not using the permitted access any more?

I would go back to the cobbles aswell and see if they can be restored. Pretty slippery to drive on though. Best edged with some big stones (kerbstones would do, protruding at the same height)

Type 1MOT will hold water unless it’s go a thicker layer over it.

The whole point is that it is free draining. I live on the west coast of Scotland, my house was built on a metre-deep raft of the stuff because we’re half-way up a slope and the run-off forms streams and waterfalls as it goes off a cliff into the sea. If it held water, we’ll be out at sea come next year…

In terms of the OP, if you get your way down to the cobbles, they can be reset in a bed of sharp sand over a bed of type 1. You’ll never have more fun with a big rubber mallet and a bag of sand.

Any chance you could all club together and buy the land off the person where the black car is parked?

That land is communal, we just let them use it as theirs. However, it’s a conservation area so weird planning, and theres about a 5 ft drop to the road from there.

and also maybe deep set cobbles may be more difficult to rip up? I’m not sure.

If you were closer to Ayr I’d offer to lift your cobbles if you just want rid of them, this would leave you the prepared base they were laid in ready to put the new road in.

I don’t have a tow bar at the minute, is it the canal at Bishopbriggs?

is it the canal at Bishopbriggs

yes. though I didn’t want to advertise where I live 😉 however if scrotes read this, there’s a movie star lives opposite, go rob him.

the cobbles are under decreasing layers of sub base and tarmac, over which is more gravel, bit of sub base and quartz chippings and finally thin tar and chip, all patchy and in places down to the old tarmac, and in some (few) places exposing cobble.

Sorry I can’t seem to edit it now, my great grandfather lived in one of the cottages(he said vaguely) when it was an estate, he was a gamekeeper for the estate.

A couple of years ago I lifted cobbles from the edges of an old road that was being resurfaced and put them into the entrance to my house, back breaking work but they will now be there for the next few hundred years and they look great, the cost of doing this from scratch is a lot, I can’t help think there is a solution in there, cobbles don’t make a good surface to tar or concrete over, smooth and hard, so anything going on top breaks up over time, hence my suggestion to edge it up higher and fill but I didn’t account for the slope.

To do right you would want to lift the cobbles, massive job and then expensive to fill the layer back up to level with type 1, although you would have a well prepared level surface below, if it is the whole length of the road it’s a lot of cobbles, I’d be exploring the possibility of getting a skip and removing everything back to the cobbles, if there is no tar stuck to them and none needing replaced they will be in good shape, they last pretty much forever and you can be assured they were put in right, it would give you a proper upgrade to a surfaced road if it were possible, and maybe all you need to do is scrape all the failed stuff off.

I think the difficulty of a lot of options will be when some heavy lorry delivers something and needs to drive back up the 20deg slope. That needs a lot of grip, a lot of strength (top to bottom) and a lot of resistance to the tyres that are pulling it back up (ie they will be trying to push the surface back down the hill).

you might be able to do this with permiable paving, but it’d need to be really well held at the edges (very deep set curbs) as the paving blocks themselves are free floating

Yeah, that’s my concern. The local delivery drivers seem to see it as a challenge as they’re convinced they can drive their lwb transit up the slope, round the 90 to park outside my front door.
Normally starts with lots of wheelspin once they yet to the top, pause, then turn the wheels and hit the gas. It’s a hell of a state because of that.
They then spend the next 20 minutes trying to figure out why they can’t get back down without taking out the side of the van with the stone wall either side of the driveway.

Sorry I can’t seem to edit it now, my great grandfather lived in one of the cottages(he said vaguely) when it was an estate, he was a gamekeeper for the estate.

Don’t worry about it.
Awesome about your great grandfather! Always good to hear a bit about the history as there have been cottages there since the early 1800s.

yeah, it was grasscrete that I was thinking of, though I’m not sure how it would cope with surface water runoff, whether that would gouge out the filled bits or not.

Nah it won’t grass is phenomenal for resisting flows that’s one of the reasons dams are grassed and mown and weeded to keep it grass only. We spec grasscrete on some access ramps.

However.

I wouldn’t recommend it in this case.

A. It looks shit it’s very much some grass in concrete.

B. It will look shitter when use has warn some of the grass areas down (you set the soil level below the concrete but over time it will fill up especially under traffic.) The bits that don’t get driven on will require maintenance to keep the short.

C. It’s actually quite crap to walk on.

D. It’s not really for high traffic areas all the edges are unsupported and I think daily use with turning etc may well break it down.

It’s a genius construction method though. Very satisfying to watch.

Oh yeah. I would recommend looking at the suds manual for ideas. I can send you a copy of you can’t find it online.

And what would say is that in terms of drainage it’s worth making sure it’s properly designed and sized. You could definitely but geocelular storage below the flat lower section fed from a rill down the side of the track. But you need a grit trap etc to make sure you don’t end up with an unmaintainable sand filled box under the drive or a box which is to small and overflows (or to big and not value for money) Depending on geology you might be able to let it soak away.

Alternatively if you own any land to the side… Rai gardens would probably do it.

We do design this stuff and we do it in your area but I’m here giving my opinion not touting for business. Along with Canals, the council roads department and SEPA might want to know what you are planning.

In fact the council might even adopt the suds elements as it serves multiple properties.

thanks.
canals will want involved, albeit want want to contribute to costs, as they own the lower flat section connecting the bottom of the slope to the road. That also has public access to the footpath that runs adjacent to our side of the canal.
The garden bit between the slope and the road is communal, however it’s also level (ish) with the top of the slope, so about 1.3m above the bottom of the slope.

personally I’d love to just extend the driveway along the canal path and excavate parking spots in our front gardens, but I think that’ll be very expensive and a bit of a minefield as it’d all be canals land! would solve problems though, like having a drive outside your front door and having neighbours driving in front of our house. the erosion of the sloping drive, risk of slippage in winter, overconfident delivery drivers….hmm
but it would mean that everyone would lose 2 parking bays worth of front garden at the bottom (but gain the land in front of their houses) and planning would prefer to have cars hidden behind vegetation at the canal bank, rather than up high and visible from the opposite canal bank (canal classed as a scheduled ancient monument)