The Brew Cabin

Posted: **Fri Feb 17, 2006 6:46 pm**

We have a house with a woodland with a blanket TPO on the roadside, coming back up the sloping garden some 35m.
With the "help" of the local Arboriculturist, required by the Council, and a lot of money, we obtained planning permission to build a new 65m driveway to a new garage through the TPO area as long as we used 'minimum excavation' and used 100mm Cell-Web on top of Geo-Textile membrane-thats it! Oh, and "...don't use plant equipment on the drive until the Geo-Web (and sharp stone filling) is in place"!
We didn't put the driveway down immediately as we had a large quantity of spoil to move from the site, (which is outside the TPO area), and the Geo-Web wouldn't stand the weight of 10 ton grab lorries.
The local driveway contractor just laughed when I showed him the drive build methodology, saying the driveway wouldn't last a year without a substantial foundation of Type 1 over crushed concrete etc..
Anyway, I excavated the driveway last September but difficulties getting materials to the garage site meant we have had to use the Kubota and dumper over the bare driveway and the track now resembles the Somme.
My question is:

We will have to excavate the mud from the drive in order to reach dry earth, so how can we then bring the driveway level back to the pre-September level without using crushed conctete etc. which was specifically banned?

The big local contractprs have had no experience with this Cell-Web, (website: www.geosyn.co.uk), and Geosyn are unhelpful, having just rushed me over 800 quid for the stuff which looks something like a plastic egg-box! (Cant help believe someones getting a back-hander here!).

The drive can then, apparently, have a porous surface laid but presumably this will need to be gravel as porous Tarmac will crack as it moves about without any real foundation?

Have you guys had experience of this Cell-Web stuff? If so, I would be genuinely pleased to have your comments and tips for its use!

Posted: **Sat Feb 18, 2006 11:09 am**

Sounds like you are in serious breach of the planning conditions placed on the drive construction through the TPO affected area. Was the council aware of proposed construction accesss works prior to the drive build?

The whole point of the construction 'method statement' is to avoid the compaction and disturbance over the tree roots, which has a bad effect on the trees in the future.

Too late now, but conditions should have specifeid a temporay 'bog mat' roadway to allow access without disturbance of the ground, then building the drive with low impact method as prescribed following all other site works.

Not sure of your best course of action now, just to get on with it and cover up the effidence asap or come clean and ask for advice from tree officer again - high risk I would guess.

Posted: **Tue Feb 21, 2006 10:27 pm**

This is quite a complex issue made even more complicated by the fact that we can't see the site and aren't aware of just what's been done or not done.

Cell-web is, in theory a piece of piss to install, but using it on a driveway is a new one on me. There are simpler "no-dig" constructions that could have been used, I'm sure. Cell-web is great if you want to run a main road over a bog, but for a driveway it's severe over-engineering.

I can't help thinking this is one of those jobs where the so-called "Planner" can't understand the concept of scale, and faced with a "tree root and traffic" problem, comes up with the solution they used on the new road to a housing estate a couple of years ago.

I've designed access via a TPO section in the past and I've never had to resort to such extremes.

I'm also surprised to hear Geo-Synth were nay use. They've always been very accommodating with me, but perhaps that's because my reputation precedes me and I speaka da lingo.

As Ability said, you're up shit creeek without a paddle as far as planning goes at this stage. You can either call back the planner and claim it was some eejit contractor that ignored everything you said and now doesn't return calls, or you can charge ahead and present the planners with a completed driveways as "fait accomplit" and hope they don't decide to make an example of you.

If it were me, I'd go with option 1, claiming the contractor must have been a bit flighty as you can't find them at all since you phoned to complain, and you never had an address for them. It might get you a bit of sympathy, but don't count on it!

The Brew Cabin

Cell-web driveways - Tpo's and driveways