So I am taking on a major project at my home in the next few weeks. I’ve decided to talk and bounce some ideas off myself with this post with regards to how I am going to make the cheapest driveway. So one things for sure I am not talking half a job here. I have an 80m2 square area and the best quotes I had for block vain was about £6000 plus the cost of dropping the height of the land nearly 1m! Would you believe I need to pay a fortune to get rid of quality top soil 🙁 too…
I’ve also to to remove the current fence and get the shrubs down too and then use my garden shredder to get rid of those cheaply. There’s a fair bit of work but I really don’t mind that. It’s a great opportunity to make plenty of offload parking which will no doubt add value to my property anyway so I’m not all that worried but I’d still like to get myself a decent bargain on this job.
So I’m not cutting corners, I want a decent solution that’ll last but at the right price, you’ll probably say I want value more than cheap.
What I’ve come up with so far as a plan of attack to get the cheapest driveway sorted professionally but doing the work myself:
I’ll need to hire a little mini digger and excavate the area. I spoke to the local waste services and they’ll do me a skip for £120 so long as it only contains top soil. The green waste needs to be charged at the normal £300 for an 8 yard. They can’t do any bigger for soil as they won’t be able to lift it otherwise. That works out to be around £1500 as I have 75 cubes to get rid of and the hire of the digger I am going to go for a week which will be a few hundred quid.
Weed fabric for driveway
I won’t be cutting corners on the weed fabric membrane. I will lay some seriously thick gear that will stop weeds for sure and I’ll also be doubling it up. If you factor £100 for the membrane over 80m2 that would be overkill but better to budget well.
Retaining wall and footings
You may not have this cost but because I am excavating down I also need to put in a sleeper wall. They are about £20 each for a 2.4m long 100mm deep section. This works out to just shy of £100 per m2 and I have 10m2 so you would have to think the retaining wall is going to cost me a grand – again if you have level land this won’t be a factor in your costs. I’ve already got a petrol auger to put in some piles as footings so don’t need to worry about that.
After the excavation and wall go in I will be looking at putting down type one. Now over 80m2 I will need about one full skip of hardcore delivered. I haven’t checked prices recently but probably £250 will cover 80m2. I’ll have to look at this but Type 1 is normally £40 a 850kg bag but skip loads are much cheaper so I’ll be going with that.
After that I’ll probably be looking at 4 tonne of sharp sand. This won’t be too dear, in the region of £150. There’s no savings here as I am not really buying enough.
What is the cheapest way to make a driveway costs per m2?
Then I’ll probably go and lay a grid system to take gravel. This is pretty cheap but will still cost a good £700 because of the 80m2 that are involved. Now the costs on this project all sound extremely high but if you do the maths on it then you’ll see the meter rate is pretty good.
So we have about £3900 including a retaining wall and the cost of mucking away. Now if you take those costs out the equation as you may not have them then you’re looking at a little less than £1500 in materials for this project. Now divide that up per m2 and you are literally looking at just 20m2 for a professional looking driveway.
Granted you need to factor a few tonnes of pebbles or gravel but to be honest that is really cheap compared to the quotes I received so I think it’s a no brainer. If you want the cheapest way to make a driveway you’ll need to pitch in and do some work yourself.
