Turning a front lawn into a useable cheap driveway – Suggestions!

The Local Council have decided they are going to paint yellow lines in my little cul-de-sac to stop people parking on the road all day – bit of a bugger when I don’t use my car for work!!

The only option I have is to park it on the little lawned area infront of my house (next to the existing driveway which is full).

Its only about 15-17m2 at a guestimate – anyone know any cheap solutions?

Have thought about shingle but I see that getting messy. Have also seen the plastic paving slabs and mesh – the slabs get expensive, the mesh looks affordable but don’t know if it would be suitable?

Cheers!

Paving slabs would probably be cheapest but you will need some hardcore and sand to bed them on to stop them sinking/moving. Just do two rows where the wheels will go.

you mean the mesh that you let the grass grow through? If not, that’d be my suggestion.

Shouldn’t cost much….

Home EN

They should have consulted you? They should have done. You can object, I would suggest doing so through your councillor. If non resident parking is an issue, ask for a residents parking scheme.

As for your off road parking, keep in mind that a significant change in surface may require planning permission. The slab plans would, the grass grids wouldn’t.

From £42k + VAT.

Shame, could use one of those…

Couldn’t find a price….. but £42K definitely falls in the cheap range
😯

They did consult, I did appeal, they responded with I live close to the train station so its to stop commuters, I responded with residents parking, panel met and refuse! So already done that, this is now dealing with what has come.

The mesh I was looking at was something like http://www.matsgrids.co.uk/grass-protection-meshes/76-grass-protection-mesh-gm450.html#/grassmesh-gm450_2m_x_10m

Traditional cheapest way is to just pave two 18″ strips where your car wheels would go and leave the rest as is. If you’re just doing the strips, it would be hard to argue that you needed planning permission for a change of surface, which is all about rainwater soaking in and not running off into the street or drains.

No permit parking? I’d challenge the council over this as sounds totally wrong if the houses there have no off street parking and yellow lines in a cul-de-sac! (unless parking there causes an obstruction, but I bet the council are just thinking money from fines).

Other than that, understandable what you want to do, but I’d resist. We’re paving over way too many gardens and it’s causing a fair amount of environmental damage in various forms (lack of drainage, increased flooding risk, increasing heat in urban areas, decreased areas for wildlife etc).

We’re paving over way too many gardens and it’s causing a fair amount of environmental damage in various forms

Most in my cul de sac have already paved and there is only 2 of us left! The mesh does appeal more just hopefully its enough do stop the grass turning into a bog!

The mesh can on the wrong subsoil and a heavy car still end up sinking and turning into a mushy mess. I dug mine out topsoil went away in a skip, whacks red down some MOT then weed membrane then 20mm stones…..big enough so they don’t get trapped in treads onto the roadway. No messy puddles of muddy water or slipping on the plastic mats.

Seeing as we are on a cycling website…how about living with fewer cars in the household?

We flung the mesh stuff down at work one year. In fact it may have been the temp road stuff they use round sites. Results were hilarious at any road, they never tried that again (lasted 2 days before some rain ruined it all).

As said, make sure you have the right ground if you’re going to do it.

You could do two strips of large (20mm) stones for the car to avoid drainage / planning / aesthetic issues, flush bordered on the edges with wood to keep tidy / contain stones. But lay them on two deeper set strips of concrete to avoid settling and weeds (the wood can also be the shoring for the concrete). We have something similar that has worked well for a number of years.

konabunny – Member
Seeing as we are on a cycling website…how about living with fewer cars in the household?

Pffft how absurd 😆

Tell the council that they are forcing you to ditch your lawn to make a driveway, which will further contribute to the loss of habitat and decline in population of garden birds.

Council won’t care. They’re only interested in where they can build more houses and restrict parking so they can raise money from charges and fines.

I thought about this when I did my drive after the council insisted I had more parking after doing an extension to the house , I was adamant I wanted a permeable surface so I opted for gravel, I used the bigger stuff & so far it has been ok, not much transfers to the road/pavement & a treatment of weed killer about twice a year so far has seen it keeping well.

HTH.

If you want to keep the grass I’d look at Ground Stabilisation Mats, think the grass mesh but rigid plastic tiles that interlock. More work as you’d probably need to strip the turf and then add topsoil and seed (or gravel etc) into the mats.

Forget grids and meshes. I’ve seen it, they’re crap.

As has been said, get some 2×3 council slabs from gumtree and do two strips. Dig out the lawn 6 inches and add hardcore then sand. Hire q whacker, it won’t cost much. Job could be done for £100-120 all in.

Do the council happen to run the railway station parking scheme by any chance ? 🙂

Most in my cul de sac have already paved and there is only 2 of us left! The mesh does appeal more just hopefully its enough do stop the grass turning into a bog!

I appreciate the position you’re in there but by paving over you’ll be taking out the last bit of natural drainage left in the road – which may or may not be the tipping point next time there’s heavy rain. Just because your neighbours haven’t thought through the longer term and more distant impacts doesn’t mean the situation is improved by doing the same. Bit like speeding on the motorway, or driving a mile to the supermarket…

That said, maybe do some research on the least environmentally-damaging way to do this? Concrete mesh sounds sensible but there may be better solutions from a drainage and nature point of view

^ From my investigations (therefore, an STW pro on such matters now) all non-permeable driveways must have drainage or ability to soak away. If not, they require planning and most likely, get refused.

If the government did something about the bloody rain we wouldn’t have this problem.

Did you get anywhere with this smurfly?

We’ve just bought a house at the end of a cul de sac, there’s enough parking for us but it can be awkward when we have friends/family visiting.

I’d like to keep as much of the lawn as possible so like the idea of the mesh tiles but I’m not convinced by them.

http://www.ljacksonandco.com/index.php/miscellaneous/recovery-matting/article/11669-psp-planking-temporary-roadway

We flung the mesh stuff down at work one year. In fact it may have been the temp road stuff they use round sites. Results were hilarious at any road, they never tried that again (lasted 2 days before some rain ruined it all).

It obviously depends on the soil, how often you drive on it etc, but this field has mesh in it to allow it to function as a car park. Still looks crap after a busy/rainy spell, but it does seem to work.

As my role as a civil engineer I’ve seen lots of meshes installed with varying degrees of success. The ones that last have a decent foundation installed under the meshes. If you just lay some on topsoil pretty much anything you buy will fail at the first rain.

strips for tyres is the way forward. You will need to take up the topsoil layer though.

Other thing to think about are dropped herbs in the highway and legal vehicle access across the footpath. You need to apply to the council for this (more money)

Keep one in the lounge.

Sorry for delay in replying!

Council painted the lines but they restricted the parking only for an hour a day!

So far had no need to re-do the lawn, just managing the hour slot accordingly

Council painted the lines but they restricted the parking only for an hour a day!

Bureaucracy at it’s finest.

No, it’s a perfectly reasonable way to stop all day parkers.

What? For a single hour? Aye okay then.

I’m in the process of doing this. I got a skip and its amazing what the neighbours want to get rid of. I dug out a load of earth that went in the skip. A neighbour donated some slabby rocks (not perfectly flat but ok) which I’m going to use in place of concrete. I’ve also buried a load of old rubble / stones that neighbours / I don’t want. I’ll then top it off with hardcore and mortar the slabs on this. Around this I’ll fill with 10mm gravel and keep a soil ‘island’ in the middle which I’ll plant with grasses and alpines.

With regards to settling, when you consider what some people park on, the recommended specs are overkill IMO. Sure if you regularly park your VW Amarok on the drive you’ll need a good base, but a lot of cars are regularly paked on lawns with no reinforcement (think campsite) or old concrete drives on a crumby 40mm foundation of stone (I think mine is) through to gravel laid on soil.

If you look on ebay you can get the plastic reinforcing mats for about £60 to cover an area for one car, but you’ll need to dig out 40mm depth of turf and then re-seed. I don’t think they look very good if the grass is cut really short.