Ok so where to start, firstly I apologise in advance for the large amount of daft questions which will follow. I own an old Edwardian house and being in a trade I have done all of the work to it myself. I recently decided to dig out for a new gravel drive. This is really not my area. The size of the drive is small, roughly 4.5m wide and 5.5m deep. Firstly I have dug the whole area to a depth of 200mm based upon the my idea of putting back a base of 150mm of MOT type 1 in three 50mm layers (each one having the whacker out over it first). Then I was going to put a membrane over the top. I was then going to put a layer of sand down followed by the plastic grid system and finally fill them up with 20mm irregular stones. 1. Firstly is this correct and in the correct order? 2. Secondly I am confused about setting the level. On any standard house I would say I would set the finished floor level 150mm under the DPC but I can't see the DPC in this house as it has the old concrete plinth running from the ground level to 500mm up the wall. So the question is where do you set the FFL with the string line. 3. Next what should the fall level be from the house to the street over that distance? 4. When putting the border around the edge do you put it in before the type one layers or on too of the type on layers? Thanks for reading, any help would be greatly appreciated.
We had a resin drive done last year, the order if i remember rightly they did the work in was: 1 dig out 2 membrane of some sort 3 mot or 4 whack plate down. 5 brickwork edging Then tarmac then resin No issues so far, someone may come along and agree or disagree.
Dig out to depth and run wacker plate over formation. You want to fall 1in 80 min ideally but less critical with this kind of surface. Water needs somewhere to go. Dig out any soft areas and fill with your subbase. Lay geotextile. I would use crushed concrete rather than proper type 1 as cheaper and generally better. Ideally you want a minimum layer thickness 3 times max stone size but this will make compaction harder so I would compromise at 75 layers. Have the material damp: it will compact better. I don't know that the sand over will do much other than fill any local boney areas. You don't need a membrane here. I would lay an edging to tidy things up but the grid will retain the stone