Existing edging on drive - Failed soldier course repair / renewal

[peteuk]

Hello,
Please see attached pictures of the drive leading to my garage.
https://1drv.ms/u/s!Ao8_zjrfOGe3gdQlmqiHE_Em63-Pzw?e=TjskTE

As far as I know it has been sound for many years and the soldier course only failed since we moved in last year. We believe a delivery van containing tiles may have driven on the drive and this caused the collapse but we cannot be sure.
There is a slope into the gravel on both sides of the drive.
An attempt was made to shore it up with cement but this obviously failed straight away.

Please can you advise the best course of action / points to take care of?
To be honest practical skills are not my strong point so I will be getting help / asking a professional to do the work. But we have had several mis-steps since buying our bungalow and and I wish to make sure we don't have more mistakes.

Q1: We are still using the drive to put our car in the garage. Is this ok until we make the repair?

Q2: Do we have to excavate the whole drive or can we reinstate just the edging on the right?

Q3: Having read your site, my poor understanding suggests we need to add an effective haunch. IE. excavate the gravel on the RHS, to a depth of at least 100mm plus the height of the block and the width of the block plus 75mm to retain it. Will this be sufficient as the haunch in your diagram cuts in under the main paving too. Do we have to excavate to do this too?

Q4: Would a steel edging (as shown in your latest video from corelp) be a better way forward?

If I am unclear or you need more pictures / info please let me know, thank you

Peter

[dig dug dan]

By the looks of the picture, it's clear the original soldier edges have not been sufficiently bedded and haunched. I would remove the entire row, , dig out whats underneath, and re bed in concrete, this time with a good haunch.
You will not need to excavate the whole drive, but you will have to remove the first row of laid blocks, as it will be inevitable that these will shift during repair works.
Once the edges are rebed, and has been left to cure, you can then infill using removed blocks and fresh sand as required.
The gravel drive next to it will need dragging back in order to be able to haunch it correctly.
It doesn't look to bad a job to be honest, no more than a days work for a competent landscaper



Edited By dig dug dan on 1611510812

[peteuk]

Thank you dig dug dan,

I appreciate your advice.
Not sure if you could see from the pictures but the drive slopes down to the road from the garage door.
Does that give me any other concerns I should be aware of?

Peter

[dig dug dan]

No, technically there should be linear drainage where it meets the road, but it's no longer enforced, besides, you can argue it drains to the gravel at the side!

[Tony McC]

I would hazard a guess that the driveway pre-dates the comedy legislation regarding surface water run-off, so that would give an automatic exemption from the need to install an interceptor drain.

Turning to the failed edge course, the good news is that it's on the "high" side of the driveway, so it's less critical, easier to fix, and not likely to pose any threat to your parking facility if left as it is for a few months. However, the sooner it is remedied, the better.

As Dan has rightly pointed out, it's a safe bet that the bed and haunch used to support the edge course is inadequate, and the simplest fix involves lifting and re-laying those edge blocks and the body blocks immediately adjacent.

While the addition of a steel edging or a kerb would strengthen the whole structure, it isn't essential. However, if you do want to 'beef up' what you have, I can talk you through the process at a later date.

For now, it's simply a matter of lifting out those edge course blocks (the pinky ones), brushing them clean and setting them aside for later re-use. Take out all the charcoal blocks in direct contact with the edge course as well, clean and stack for re-use.

Dig out a channel roughly 100-150mm deeper than the base of the blocks (so that's 200-250mm below the pavement surface) and make it at least 100mm wider than the previous outer edge of the edge course - this is to ensure adequate space for haunching.

Prepare a C20/ST4 concrete and place a bed 100mm depth (minimum) into the channel.

You have a choice on how to proceed - lay the edge course and then re-fit the body blocks, or lay the body blocks (partially on the concrete, probably) and then fit the edge blocks tight. This dilemma is more fully explored on this page.... Edge Courses: First or Last?

One the blocks are all back in place, you need to haunch using the same ST4 concrete. If you have the time, the budget, and the inclination, you could add a kerb with upstand at this stage to help minimise the risk of future overrun by incompetent delivery drivers.

Keep vehicles off the driveway for the first 72 hours by which time the concrete should be cured sufficiently to cope with *careful* parking. Avoid running onto or over the renewed edge for the first week.

Even for a basic-competence DIYer, this whole job is a single day task. If you really are cack-handed, then you could stretch it over a weekend.


If you find all this to be a pleasant and rewarding experience, it would be worth taking a look at that LH edge course which is worryingly proud of ground level and could well benefit from checking over and possibly thinking about reconstructing with a retainer kerb and/or flag-on-edge sunk well into the sub-grade.

And those mortar infills against the carriageway kerb.....oh dear!

[peteuk]

Thank you again dig dug dan and Tony,
Much food for thought here. I need to read it again to digest it fully.
I get the feeling you might be encouraging me to have a go myself but I still lack confidence despite your excellent advice. At least I will need someone with me who has experience before I would take this on. I'm more likely to try to find someone local to me

I appreciate the comments about the LH kerb. I was thinking I may need to do something at the same time. As for the infills I was thinking I had to live with those unless I redid the total drive.

I appreciate you saying it is not urgent.
I know my wife is thinking of a whole new drive because of the infills and some blocks staying dark even when dry. Having read your site I believe this is water retention / that I'd be unlikely to match the blocks and new block paving may suffer the same. I may ask for a 2nd opinion on this in another post when things dry out.
I'd like to leave it as it is even if not perfect.

If she gets her way (she usually does eventually) then I fear she will want patterned concrete or resin - and it will be a whole new lot of arguments for us / me reading on here

[Bob_A]

.....exemption from the need to install an interceptor drain.,,,,,

Apologies to the original poster for going slightly off topic.
By interceptor drain are we talking about some sort of linear drainage that takes excess water to a SUDS system?
I have noticed a few recently installed drives with linear drains that don't seem to be connected to anything.
Do you think contractors could be doing this so it looks like they are complying with the legislation but in fact just creating a rectangular bucket that will overflow onto the public footpath during a downpour?

[dig dug dan]

.....exemption from the need to install an interceptor drain.,,,,,

Apologies to the original poster for going slightly off topic.
By interceptor drain are we talking about some sort of linear drainage that takes excess water to a SUDS system?
I have noticed a few recently installed drives with linear drains that don't seem to be connected to anything.
Do you think contractors could be doing this so it looks like they are complying with the legislation but in fact just creating a rectangular bucket that will overflow onto the public footpath during a downpour?

Yes. My neighbour didn't install a drain, and back in the day when they were enforcing it, they made him put a channel in.he got the contractor to lift a row of blocks, put a linear channel in, that wasnt connected to anything, they signed it off. It's happening everywhere

[Bob_A]

.....exemption from the need to install an interceptor drain.,,,,,

Apologies to the original poster for going slightly off topic.
By interceptor drain are we talking about some sort of linear drainage that takes excess water to a SUDS system?
I have noticed a few recently installed drives with linear drains that don't seem to be connected to anything.
Do you think contractors could be doing this so it looks like they are complying with the legislation but in fact just creating a rectangular bucket that will overflow onto the public footpath during a downpour?

Yes. My neighbour didn't install a drain, and back in the day when they were enforcing it, they made him put a channel in.he got the contractor to lift a row of blocks, put a linear channel in, that wasnt connected to anything, they signed it off. It's happening everywhere

So it happens a lot then.
I suppose unless you have a very strict building control it will go unnoticed. :laugh:

[Tony McC]

I have noticed a few recently installed drives with linear drains that don't seem to be connected to anything.
Do you think contractors could be doing this so it looks like they are complying with the legislation but in fact just creating a rectangular bucket that will overflow onto the public footpath during a downpour?

I refer to these as 'Phantom Drains' - and they are nothing less than cheating.

The contractors responsible for this nonsense usually claim the channels are 'draining to ground' but with no evidence to show that the gournd is suitably permeable for such an arrangement, and yet even that claim is utter bollocks. They are a con, pure and simple.

They cheat the local community by breaching planning regs and dumping an additional surface water burden onto the public highway and overburdened sewer system.

They cheat the homeowner by charging good money for something that is practically useless - a waste of time and materials.

They cheat the good contractors, those that play by the rules, because by omitting any sub-surface connecting drainage, the rogues can be cheaper and therefore more likely to win the job.

When I was a judge for the 'driveway of the year' for a major national paving manufacturer, I *immediately* binned any entry with a phantom drain. No matter how good the paving work, the walling, the design, the overall layout, if they cheat with a phantom drain, they should not win anything other than our condemnation.

I gave a short pre-competition talk about this, but the next year, at least five of the entries had phantom drains.

When I asked why they used an unconnected linear channel, the most common "excuse" was that they did not know what to do, how to deal with such a situation, how it should be connected. Yet again, lack of training.

It's so easy for me to rail against the contractors committing this cardinal sin, but the real falut lies with the gormless legislators back in 2007-2008 who refused to listen to the likes of me, or Marshalls, or Charcon, or Brett, or Interpave, or Interlay, but preferred to take driveway construction guidance from the RHS. No disrespect to the RHS, but they are *not* paving engineers. They thought they were doing the right thing....they ballsed up, as did the government department responsible, and a once-in-a-generation opportunity to do something that actually benefitted the whole community was missed.....and all to appease the tabloid press.

</end rant>

[MikeG]

I’m glad you have that standard Tony. I have never installed a ‘phantom drain’ (good terminology) but see it being done everywhere. It’s such a stupid situation to be in as a contractor, you tell the customer the legislation and as they see these drains on literally every new drive (I’ve even seen them on thresholds between pavement and driveway that slope both ways away from the drain!:rock: ) some end up half thinking your making work for yourself and get suspicious.