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Your next step, if you do elect to forge ahead with installing a driveway will be make a choice about what type of driveway is going to be most suitable for your circumstances. There are many different types of driveway available, as I'm sure you will be aware, but these may not all be right for you. If you're on a tight spending budget you could be to some degree limited in your choices. The configuration and dimensions of your property's garden may also affect your final decision.

You might say "a driveway is just a driveway", however that simply isn't true, given that there are many different designs and types of driveway, and if you were to take a walk around your town, you will see what I mean. You should see shingle driveways, grass driveways, block paved driveways, tarmac driveways, resin bound driveways, asphalt driveways, concrete driveways, cobbled driveways, patterned concrete driveways and natural stone driveways, in various forms, however this will give you a perception of all the potential alternatives.

What Type of Driveway is Best? Before deciding what type of driveway is right for your property, there are a few things that you will have to take into account. A few details that you would be sensible to think about - 1. Local authority planning permission - is planning permission needed for your driveway? 2. How the land lies - is the area level or sloped? 3. How successfully does your garden drain - does water collect where you're wanting to build your driveway?

Although you may think that you can just stick a driveway anywhere you like on your land, this is not automatically true. The legislation that pertain to driveways aren't just laid down by the local authority, but are in reality enforced by government law. However, at this moment in time, these laws only affect driveways being laid in front gardens. This legislation, which is known as the Sustainable Drainage Systems (SuDS) has been in force since October 2008, when it was first brought in.

If you are aiming to build a driveway having an area of more than 5m² and it's in your front garden, you are going to be affected by these SuDS legislation. You won't have to stress about this if you build your driveway from a porous (permeable) substance like shingle, permeable concrete block, porous asphalt, monoblock (grass) or resin, which will allow the water to pass through and naturally drain away. If you believe that the SuDS legislation will affect your planned driveway in the UK, you can see detailed information here - Sustainable Drainage Systems

Naturally it is quite feasible for you to build your own driveway in the UK, if you are fairly good at do-it-yourself and are not fazed by a touch of hard work. However no-one should think of this as an easy process, as there is a great deal of preparation work involved apart from actually laying the driveway, including doing waste removal, lugging materials and excavating. If you've got any concerns about whether you would be able to tackle a project such as this, it might be a good idea to hire an experienced driveway specialist.

With this kind of project, you've got to be wary about exactly who you pick, seeing as you clearly need somebody who knows precisely what they are up to. There are plenty of cowboys and rogue traders out there who will soon pocket your cash and do a lousy job. It's worth shelling out a bit more money to get a proper job done, instead of taking a risk with a substandard worker just to save yourself a couple of quid. Driveway and patio contractors who have been offering their services in and around the UK for a number of years would be the smartest choice.

When assessing these paving contractors, you should at the very least ask for some references from satisfied clientele, ask what warranties they offer on their workmanship, ascertain how long they've been in business, check that they have got insurance protection, ask if they are a member of a trade association such as ANTSCA (the surfacing trade association) and ask to look at a portfolio of past projects.

This doesn't have to be an inquisition, but asking these germane questions should give you an inkling of the sort of individual that you are going to be dealing with. If they are relaxed about answering all of these questions, you can assume that they are fairly genuine. You can deem that they're hiding something or being less than honest if they're confrontational or hesitant when asked such questions. If that occurs you would be wise to avoid them like the plague and try another tradesman.

If you are wary and pick a really good driveway paver, they will help you make all the most important decisions with regards to your project, including the recommended driveway technique, the favoured location and the best materials. And that is not the end of it, because they'll also take care of all the design, preparation and planning that's required for your new driveway installation to go like clockwork.

Gravel Driveways

When looking into the various types of driveway you might choose to favour the easiest and cheapest, which is gravel. Regardless of their simplicity gravel driveways can be quite an eye-catching alternative, particularly in rural locations where they're the most popular. Seeing that there is such a wide array of gravel sizes and shades, you should not have any problems locating one that you're satisfied with. A good substantial base layer of hardcore is required for a gravel drive to be successful, as well as a firmly-bedded edging. The best quality gravel driveways are the result of applying 3 or 4 layers of aggregate, with each layer rolled and then left to settle down before laying the next. You will not need to apply for planning permission with a gravel driveway, given that it will be SuDS compliant regardless of how large it is, or whether it's in your back or front garden. (Tags: Aggregate Driveways, Gravel Driveways, Shingle Driveways).

Asphalt Driveways

When you're looking for that extra bit of 'curb appeal' for your property in, an asphalt driveway, with its smooth consistent surface, is an ideal choice. For the optimal outcome make sure you employ a proficient asphalt contractor that will provide a driveway that lasts for many years does not need much maintenance or after-care. In high flood risk areas it might be necessary to have a porous driveway, and there's a type of asphalt sub-grade reservoir for rain run-off, which prevents excess water from over-filling highway drainage systems.

Asphalt driveways are well designed to withstand anything that winters can throw at them, and provide exceptional value for money. Asphalt is easily repaired and maintained, and isn't too difficult to remove if your circumstances change in the future. The fact is, asphalt can be recycled for use elsewhere, making this the most ecological of the solid driveway products. (Tags: Asphalt Driveway, Asphalt Driveways, Asphalt Driveway Recycling).

Block Paved Driveways

Scores of driveways have popped up in in recent years, built using the block-paved method, which can be extremely effective when carried out correctly. These are built using hundreds of specially designed block-paving bricks which are butted together to form eye-catching and elaborate designs. When the blocks have been put in place, they're firmly tamped down, and kiln-dried sand is brushed into the exposed joints. After four or five months it is recommended to have your block-paved driveway sealed with a high quality sealant (like Thompsons), this helps to stop weed growth. There are lots of designs in which block paving is laid, including fan, basket weave, herringbone and stretcher bond.

SuDS Compliant Block Paving Driveways: Compliant with SuDS block paved driveways are quite feasible by adjusting the traditional methodology. Wider gaps than normal are left in between the blocks and rather than the standard kiln-dried sand, these are filled with fine aggregate material.

Natural Stone Driveways

Natural stone is terrific as a driveway material since it improves with age. The choice of natural stone will give you a stable and strong driveway, for any car or vehicle, and will look awesome for an entire lifetime. The depth of tone and natural colouring gives a distinctive appearance to a stone driveway, and provides a bespoke and individual look to any home. The natural stone gives a warm, soft look to any driveway, and adds to that much sought after WOW factor.

Driveways made from natural stone not only look fantastic, but they're easy to maintain and less at risk of being damaged than some alternatives. They're also simple to clean, and with narrower gaps between the stones there is considerably less chance of seed and weed germination on your drive. A properly prepared and installed stone driveway is an investment that will only add value to your home.

Driveway Cleaning

If you do not have a driveway at this point in time, then obviously cleaning will not be necessary, however this is definitely something you'll need to plan for in the very near future. Keeping a driveway clean isn't usually a priority for a lot of TOWN householders. Nevertheless, from both a maintenance and aesthetic viewpoint, cleaning your driveway is important, and this procedure ought to be undertaken on a fairly regular basis, not just every now and then. If weeds, roots and other organic plant growth are allowed to establish themselves, with time they can weaken the structure of your driveway. If your drive has existing holes and cracks, these can easily be enlarged which could ultimately trigger structural problems.

If dirt, stains or weed growth show up on your drive, eliminating them as soon as possible is advisable. Yet, most householders wait for the springtime or summer to pressure wash their drives, merely because weeds and moss are more obvious at this time of year. The attractiveness of your drive can be really spoilt by brake fluid, petrol and oil spillages from your vehicle. It's therefore vital to eliminate them promptly to avoid unsightly stains on your driveway's surface.

To clean your driveway thoroughly you'll need to use a jet washing machine, and you will also need a few other tools and equipment, for example a bucket, a scraper, a broom, a wire brush and detergent. If you don't have the proper gear, or aren't confident in doing it yourself, you can call in a specialist driveway cleaning service, or ask your local driveway installers if they are prepared to do it.

Tarmac Driveways

Due to its durability and strength, tarmac is an ideal choice for the surface of a driveway. When professionally laid it does not need much maintenance, offers excellent weather resistant properties and looks fantastic. The sturdiness of a tarmac driveway means that it can withstand daily wear and tear from larger and heavier vehicles, like motor-homes, with no damage or ridges being caused to the surface.

It offers excellent value, and tarmac can be coloured to match the surroundings or your property. You're able to custom-build a tarmac drive to match your property or home, with various colours on offer. It's perfectly possible for a competent driveway company to lay a brand new tarmac driveway in less than a day. Tarmac really is an ideal material for any driveway, due to its ease of installation, maintenance free properties and strength.

Resin-Bound Driveways

Among the most attractive and flexible sorts of driveway that are available at this time, resin-bound driveways (or resin driveways) are becoming more and more favoured and are also SuDS compliant, if that is what you're in need of. Available in a whole host of designs and colours, resin driveways can be customized to your exact requirements, and laid to match any concept or theme. For faster, more convenient installation resin-bound driveways can be laid on top of a current asphalt or concrete base with a lot less hassle and mess. Resin driveways are easy to clean, maintenance free, durable, permeable, and a fantastic alternative to concrete, block paving, gravel or asphalt. A resin driveway will give many years of reliable service, and when installed by a reputable company, come with a long guarantee. (Tags: Resin-Bonded Driveways, Resin-Bound Driveways, Resin Driveways).

Concrete Driveways

Ideal for building driveways, and a very popular material for years, concrete has got the advantage of being hard wearing, strong and largely maintenance-free. With regards to cost, concrete is about middling for driveways, being dearer than tarmac or gravel, but less costly than block paving and resin. If you find concrete driveways to be quite boring and drab, it's possible to add a patterned or imprinted surface finish to make them look like cobblestones or pebbles. (Tags: Patterned Concrete Driveway, Concreted Driveways, Concrete Driveway).

Driveway Tasks

If you pick your driveway company carefully they will have the skills necessary to help with painted driveways, tar driveways, the maintenance of gravel driveways, coloured tarmac driveways, monoblock driveway installations in the UK, the design of asphalt driveways, permeable driveway installations, the repair of aggregate driveways, bonded gravel driveways, resin driveway installations, driveways with pavers, paving a driveway, cheap driveway ideas, commercial driveway installation, driveway resurfacing, asphalt driveway recycling, driveway cleaning, driveway installation estimates, driveway drainage, driveway replacement, grass driveway installation, driveway culverts, the construction of flagstone driveways, the repair of concrete driveways, driveway markers, gated driveways, granite block driveways, pebble driveways, domestic driveway installations, stone resin driveways and any one of innumerable additional driveway related services in the UK. Listed are just a handful of the duties that are conducted by people specialising in driveways. Driveway providers will be happy to inform you of their whole range of services

More Advice and Guidance

By taking a look at YouTube videos you are able to discover how to put in a resin bound driveway. Social media is clearly the place where the majority of homeowners in the UK head these days when they are searching for ideas and images for products and services. If that is what you love to do and you're presently searching for information on driveway installation check this out. You should pay a visit to Rated People or the government backed Trustmark website, if you want to conduct a search for licensed local driveway contractors in the UK. The dedicated Wikipedia "driveways" page is the place to head over to for details of the purposes of driveways, the different sorts of driveways, the local legislation regarding driveways and the materials used for driveways. To read a useful article about how to choose a driveway check this out.

Driveway Questions

Over the last few weeks I have been looking through the questions homeowners in the UK ask regarding driveways. A number of our visitors have submitted justifiable questions that are relevant to this article. The ones I picked out were, "Where can I buy driveway gravel?" "When should you seal your driveway?" "Should a concrete driveway have rebar?" "How do driveway drains work?" "What happens if driveway sealer freezes?" "How much does the average driveway cost?" I hope nearly all of those questions have been dealt with on this page, and if some remain unanswered a driveway "Q&A" feature will be introduced in the near future. My gratitude goes out to the following homeowners in the UK for making the effort to pose their excellent questions; Kaiden Clarkson, Sarah Crawford, Tony Mcdonald and Jane Mcgrady. It was also fantastic to get offerings from Noah Weston in Newlands, Aaliyah Cowell in Hadleigh and Isaac Friend in Fobbing.

Skip Hire for Driveways

When you're carrying out a driveway installation project in the UK, or any other kind of home or garden revamp, it's likely that a certain volume of rubbish and waste will be generated that can't be disposed of in your regular household wheelie bins. Actually, in most regions, construction or garden materials must be disposed of in a controlled and eco-friendly way, in accordance with local authority legislation. Consequently if you are to stay safely within the law, you'll have to transport your waste materials to a recognised disposal and recycling site, generally a council tip. If you do not want to be carting waste materials back and forth to your nearby Domestic Recycling Centre, it may be better to look for skip hire in your area.

By using an established skip hire contractor, you'll be given assurances that all of your waste will be driven to an authorised site, and will be disposed of correctly and safely. Even so, it's crucial to establish the form of waste materials that will be generated by the driveway project, and you can go through this with your chosen contractor and the skip hire provider concerned. If there's a chance that asbestos containing materials might be involved, the skip hire company will need to divide the dangerous waste into a totally separate disposal system for health and safety reasons. Hazardous waste is best left to the professionals, and strict regulations cover it's safe disposal. To make sure all guidelines and regulations are addressed appropriately, both your driveway installer and the skip hire firm will work together.

The perfect solution is if you happen to have a space when a skip can be sited on your garden or drive. On the reverse side of the coin, if you do not have a suitable area, and you park your vehicle on the main road, you might need to seek the help of your neighbours, and see whether they can leave a space for your skip someplace close to the work area. A skip which is placed on a driveway or private land doesn't need a permit, but if it has to go on a public highway in the UK it will definitely need a temporary local authority skip permit, get hold of them to see whether you need one. This will guarantee there are no problems with regards to siting your skip.

Skip hire providers offer skips of all shapes and sizes, and you can rent anything from skip bags and mini-skips right up to builders skips and gigantic roll-on roll-off monstrosities. To hire a skip for your project in the UK, CLICK HERE for a quote.

Making the Most of Your Homes Curb Appeal

When you begin to think about it, there are numerous avenues in which to provide your home with more curb appeal. Several abode owners mistakenly believe that the above isn't a big deal, since it is regarding issues that are frivolous. But, if selling your home is the goal, or if all you want to do is make it more welcoming and attractive, in all likelihood, what appears to be insignificant can be tremendously monumental. When the outside of your home looks attractive, it conveys that you are an owner who is diligent and attentive.

Among the many projects you could take on for a new look to make your home have a more attractive curb appeal, would be painting. You have to start somewhere, but take the time to make sure you will need to go to that extreme. Take a close look at the paint, and if it is not too weathered looking or chipping away, and you do not mind the color; you could always get a power washer and give it a thorough cleaning. By taking this route, you will be saving money, it will be simple and you will be pleasantly surprised how great it will look. It is unbelievable how filthy your home can get without you even knowing it is happening. Power washers are available to rent at many stores and if you are unable to do it yourself, you can always hire the job out. If you leave out any of the structures, they will look even worse than before; so make sure to pressure wash everything that can be.

You really need to consider the outside of your home and what colors go with it. One way to increase the curb appeal of any home is to change the color that it currently is; to begin this process, you need to think of another color that you would find more appealing. Once you know what color you would change the exterior to, you should also think about changing specific areas like the shutters around your windows and other smaller areas. Many people will do simple things such as add color by adding a plant here and there instead of painting their entire home for the effect. The colors that you choose, and the changes that you make, should be things that you want to do that will actually make you happy as well as impress other people.

One problem that many homeowners have, even renters, is that it is so much work to take care of a lawn; many people desire some kind of alternative. Anybody that has a lawn understands that it would be very beneficial to save all of that time and effort by replacing it with something that wasn't so high maintenance. Green grass is very beautiful, but it is also a good idea to change up the look of your home by choosing landscaping that requires less upkeep. If you are looking for something low maintenance, with exceptional landscaping design, xeriscaping may be for you. It really doesn't matter where you live, xeriscaping will work in any climate or region.

Once you have finished reading this article, you should have several ideas on how to add curb appeal to your dwelling. This is not a home improvement project - you are simply making your house look better by doing a couple different things. Many elements, from your driveway to your backyard to your front door has an impact on your home's curb appeal.

Doing a Search Online

It is considerably simpler to look for a tradesman or service right now than it was in the past, given that we've got the advantage of technology and can just do a search on the web. Immediate and pertinent results are the reward of searching with Bing, Google or Yahoo, which were created for this exact role. One drawback can be that the first page results displayed by the major search engines might not be exactly the ones you were after. Typing in "UK driveways", "driveways in the UK", "driveway installers near me" or "driveways" will normally be the process to use when looking for a driveway specialist in the UK. You need to know that the 4 top results are often PPC advertisements (which may or may not be on-topic), and lots of the remaining page one listings will likely be from large trade portals like Checkatrade, My Hammer, Rated People, My Builder, TrustaTrader or Bark or web directories such as Gumtree, Yelp, Scoot or Yell. Odd job men usually don't have substantial budgets to push their websites to the uppermost rankings, so you're liable to find these out-of-the-way lower down the listings perhaps on the second or third pages. Approved tradesmen websites like Rated People or Checkatrade are still handy though, and you will be able to make full use of their informative services to examine customers appraisals, obtain free quotes and read through reviews, since there are local driveway pavers on there who do not even have a website.

Driveway Installer Services

Find Driveway Pavers in the UK Here

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More Tradespeople: Whilst you may just be looking for someone who can do driveway installation in the UK, you can also find garden clearance in the UK, a builder in the UK, a landscape gardener in the UK, a bricklayer in the UK, SKIP HIRE in the UK, a decking specialist in the UK, a garden designer in the UK, pressure washing in the UK, a fencing contractor in the UK, a gardener in the UK, an electrician in the UK, a carpenter in the UK, driveway cleaning in the UK, a tiler in the UK, a lawn care specialist in the UK, patio laying in the UK, waste removal in the UK, property extension in the UK.

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