surfacing a drive

Doesnt seem to bother large stretches of motorway?

I assume you're going to DIY,in which case concrete is your best bet. For utility, you only need do the sloping bit or even two parallel strips where the wheels run. You need to think if trucks use it, there may be a need for reinforcing steel. Almost invariably the case. It only takes one truck to wreck it.

Sloping gravel roads need barriers at intervals and side ditches to direct the water off the road and convey it away.

The barriers can be a simple tump across the road at 45deg They need regular attention as wheels wear them away and fine material piles up behind them.

You also need to avoid "tramlining" by driving allover a gravel road to equalise out the wear. (Water runs down the tramlines.)

Blimey, long drive that. Round here there is a bloke who used a kind of bonded shingle like stuff on his hard standing. OK for about two years, now the embedded pebble bits are all coming away and ending up on the footway and in the road, pedestrians are slipping and rolling on them and cursing his choice. It just goes to show that something that looks nice might have hidden dangers. If your limestone is breaking up, then I rather suspect whatever you attempt to cover it with will not stay put very long once rain gets under the surface, that is the problem. Brian

We had a loose gravel drive but the young adults in the family woUld not slow down for the bend so the gravel all ended up on the outside of it. I gave up on raking it, too much like hard work, so we tarmacadamed it over 20 years ago and its is still going strong. Moss is the only problem. Its a damn sight easier to gather leaves from. Billygoat (

In message snipped-for-privacy@mid.individual.net>, williamwright snipped-for-privacy@f2s.com writes

I've been looking at clip together plastic grid sections for our *almost level* drive. 'kin expensive considering they claim to be re-cycled material. Neighbours have 20mm pebbles and that is noisy and moves about. I would fill with 6-10mm roadstone if we ever do it.

Highways get very cross if you allow loose material from your drive to reach their road surface!

For a hard wearing utility area I'd go for concrete especially if it has to carry a regular load. Bitmac is good for a residential drive taking mostly domestic vehicles with the occasional heavy wagon.

What the relative costs are I don't know.

Concrete is not a good choice if you put down salt to counteract icy conditions for it causes the concrete to crumble away.

If you oversalt it does but just don't oversalt.

One of my neighbours had this problem in the steeper bit of slope down to the road, in the end they installed concrete moulded to imitate worn stone blocks which does not look too bad, and controls the worst of the migration.

Brush some dry mix into the part on the slope to help bind it together?

Only if it is particularly low grade concrete and you add a heck of a lot of salt. A local village had new fancy coloured concrete paving slabs laid which never really looked up to the job and turned out to be easily destroyed by salt and freeze thaw action the first winter.

My drive is ribbed concrete and slope about 20%. It has survived salt and is well behaved. I gather that modern practice is not to have such ribs any more. Neighbours was done by the same contractor last year and they now do a smooth finish which resists salt attack even better.

My drive is at least 4 decades old and shows no signs of the concrete deteriorating despite occasionally getting the coal wagon on it. It was laid in rafts about 12'x20' with about 1" gaps between them.