1" concrete driveway - this'll be fun :)

House across the road. With no warning, previous occupants who have lived there as long as we've lived here (16 years then) upped and moved overnight last November. We got a notice of application to build a 2 storey extension on the side a few days later

Since then, there have been on average not less than 4 guys "working" on the house doing goodness knows what. They've had 12 skips, countless deliveries of bricks and blocks (f*ck knows where they've gone) and all to show for it is a rebuilt porch (single storey) and new glazing.

Finally last week it looked like people were viewing/moving in.

Yesterday they cleared a lot of rubble from the front garden, and today are whacking the ground down - presumably to pour a lot of premix concrete onto to make a driveway.

hardcore - you must be joking. depth - 1-2".

I remember seeing someone lay tarmac over soil where, I?m pretty sure, there had been a lawn of sorts. Not long later you could have mown the tarmac.

The next step was this ?imprinted? concrete which looks like paving. Within a year or so, it needed mowing as well.

At the time (about 25 years back) we were considering replacing our drive in a previous house. Until I saw the imprinted concrete here, it had been one of the options. We went for block paving.

"Boys from the BlackStuff" circa 1981

that scam was very common once. 'We got some tarmac left over from a road job, can do your drive for £25 today. Cash, no vat.' Looked great at first. By next year it was trashed.

NT

This happened to friend of mine: a Doctor of Philosophy; a professor at Cambridge University. He got stung twice: once by the Boys from the Blackstuff and once by his wife, also an academic from Cambridge but with her feet firmly on the ground. When she came home that evening she was absolutely livid!

Nick

Mate of mine had the imprinted concrete and it never had anything coming through it. Her husband was a builder.

Most of ours are concrete, mostly not imprinted and I have never seen any with grass growing through them.

We don?t have many tarmac driveways.

My dad was caught out with it. We had a concrete drive with rounded pebbles embedded in the concrete. It was a bloody awful surface, both for riding my pedal car and bicycle over, and for my parents driving their cars over. And the inevitable "leftover tarmac" guys came round and offered to resurface it. My dad, who normally has his head screwed on, fell for it. The drive looked good for a few days and then the tarmac started to come up in patches, exposing the underlying pebbles and concrete. He never did catch up with the culprits, though Trading Standards said they'd had several other reports from people in the area who'd also made complaints about the same guys. This was in the late 60s.

Another house across the road (2 doors along) had theirs done 2 years ago after a new owner. A load of proper motorway maintenance vehicles turned up and dug, put hardcore and at least a foot of tarmac down before rolling it with a steam roller. It must have cost tens of thousands and in no way matched the status of the house. SWMBO and I agree there's something "odd" about it. No one seems to live there, but ice-cream vans are stored in the garage the new owner built, and there's a stream of people turning up daily - as if to work.

I reckon it's a drug dealers den (with ice cream vans being a front ...). But heigh ho, doesn't cause us any problems ....

Imprinted concrete is OK if properly done.

Just watching a new housing subdivision being done here, what you lot call an estate.

Interesting to see the detail of how the roads are done. Hasn?t got the tarmac on yet, just the hardcore and the concrete gutters so far. The hardcore is quite deep, likely a foot or so. The tarmac wont be, you can see where the top of the tarmac must end up because of the concrete gutters there already.

Ours apparaently use the fast food delivery operations/pizza delivery.

This one has been there for atleast a decade now and is still perfect.

Rather deep imprinting which I find awkward to walk on. Big squares about 8" square giving a sort of cobblestone effect.

Not long after we had or drive (in fact the whole frontage) of our previous house block paved, we had a knock on the door and just such an offer. He even tried to convince me tarmac was better.

I don?t doubt imprinted drives can be fine, I?ve seen some which look ok. This one just seemed jinxed.

A *foot* of tarmac seems a little OTT unless there were 40 tonne trucks driving around the front garden.

F*ck all grows in OZ unless you water it.

I suppose it gets too hot and runny.

GH

Dunno about 40 tonners, but there were full-sized tarmac lorries driving on it.

Try that here on clay and you will probably have crazy paving within five years. Brian

You do have to also watch those who are not out and out scammers but fancy themselves as odd job men and graduate upward with no knowledge at all. Luckily I only got them to paint Creosote on my front fence. They painted over the embossed reflective numbers, even though they could easily have removed the screws and replaced them. There was creosote on the hedge on the pavement spots of it on the gate, which was freshly painted white. I noted at the time they offered driveways, I feel anyone taking them up on that might have some slight issues of quality of work. Brian

This is the thing about scams - it is easy to read descriptions and think "Hah! I'd never fall for *that*"; but you never know when some scammer whose M.O. matches your weaknesses will happen by, just when you are a bit distracted ...

#Paul