The Brew Cabin

We're having paving put in by a contractor at the moment. We agreed in advance on 100mm DTp1 as specified on your site. But in fact they have broken up our old concrete driveway into 5-10cm rubble and laid that out, and were planning to spread just enough DTp1 over that to fill the gaps and make it flat. From surface to top of rubble is only 12cm, so with 5cm blocks and 5cm sand that means we'd only have about 2cm scalpings over the rubble. They maintain this will be strong enough. What do you think?

Well, it's just about over now. I don't know what I would have done without this site.

For a start, I'd made sure they agreed to your example spec, so I got them to dig down to the right depth, remove the worst of the rubble, and put the proper 10cm sub-base down.

I was glad I had, because after that they were trying to cut one corner after another, and if I hadn't known what to expect I wouldn't have realised it and been able to stop it. The clincher was when they wanted to use the plastic that the blocks had come wrapped in as a "membrane" between the sub-base and the sand.

I hadn't realised there were so many different ways of getting your fingers burned in this process. It took a lot of argument, but I think I got a decent driveway in the end, thanks to you guys. Cheers.

Sorry I wasn't around to answer your first message, but it seems you have things under control. They sound quite a bunch, and they would probabaly be best avoided, but, as they are 'on-site' and the ground is open, it makes sense to get them to complete the job. However, you should keep your eye on them, and, if you have any more concerns, just give me a shout. I'll be here every day, now, for the next couple of weeks at least! :)