Thanks Andy from what you say it looks as if I can coat it in tarmac. Its
an old bungalow and several around have tarmac drives which look ok so I
might run with that. I'm not too worried about time scales, I'm a pensioner
now and so long as it sees me of the planet then that will do.

Any idea how much per sq metre were talking about ?

Sam Farrell
"Andy Hall" wrote in message
...
On 2007-07-18 18:33:43 +0100, "Sam Farrell" said:

My concrete driveway is still sound but looking its age . I was thinking
of
getting someone to put a few inches of tarmac on it.

Is this acceptable or do I have to dig it all out etc ??

Sam

Yes you can

I had this situation for my drive from when the house was new - a
substantial concrete base of around 100-125mm on top of MOT type 1 and
then about 75mm of tarmac on top of that.

During its 20 year lifetime there was one small crack across part of the
width - probably settlement - and some indents where skip lorries dropped
their hydraulic rams directly on the surface rather than onto timber as
they had been asked to do in writing. That mistake cost them several
thousands of £s.

Other than that, it was certainly durable.

The problem for me is that it is a large drive and I just don't feel that
a large amount of tarmac is visually appealing at all. My solution was
to have the whole lot ripped up including the concrete and replaced with
handmade clay pavers.

If you are starting from sound concrete that looks tired and the area is
not too large, then I think that properly done tarmac is a good
proposition - as long as you can soften its visual impact with plants and
other features. It should be mechanically good for 15 years plus as long
as you don't run heavy lorries on it.

If you think you might want to have blocks or bricks laid on a flexible
base (i.e. compacted type 1, compacted sand, .. in a few years then this
can't be done on concrete - there has to be drainage. The only options
then are to go for a rigid paving - means blocks laid and pointed -
specialist and costly, or to take out the concrete.

So there's the "now" decision and the "down the road" decision. The
questions are really timescales, lifetimes and is the concrete really
sound.