DRIVE: design

The design for the drive was always going to be herringbone clay pavers. We had existing paths at the front and back of the house with borders and low retaining walls that could inform how the drive might look. The design did evolve over time however to try and mitigate the prominence of the drain cover. We eventually opted for a set of herringbone quadrants with a curved top.

Jan 2014: The herringbone design for hand made clay pavers.

There are various rules and regulations for paving over your front garden these days so it is important to make sure your plans comply. Your local authority will usually supply you with the specifications for porosity and drainage etc. for your area. The crossover to the road is also something you might need to consider, particularly if you are adding an opening for an in out drive. You need to apply for planning permission for a new crossover and this can add quite a lot to the cost of your project.

The main obstacle to embarking on the drive was the shear cost of the clay pavers we wanted to use. A drive is one of those projects that has a base cost irrespective of your chosen surface. You can go for cheap blocks or tarmac but the site still needs to be cleared and dug out. There needs to be a substructure of hardcore and borders, and possibly the cost of skips, modifications to walls and gates etc. Basically drives are really expensive. The problem we had was that our bricks were already going to cost about £2000 before we even started to pay someone to start digging. If we used cheap block pavers it would still cost thousands of pounds to have something we didn’t really want. Also, the herringbone clay pavers needed to be on edge so obviously we needed twice as many to cover the area. That was without adding the cost of the fence…

July 2014: The corner of the finished drive where the herringbone design meets the retaining wall and lawn.

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