The Brew Cabin

Posted: **Tue Aug 21, 2007 10:08 am**

We have a relatively small drive (compared to some projects being written about here) 2.6m x 6m. We are planning to gravel to drive using the Nidaplast system.

We've dug out for the sub-base and are ready to order the Type 1. On average the depth of the excavated drive is 26cm, so allowing 8cm for gravel (5.5cm, including 4cm for Nidaplast, 1.5cm overfill; and 2.5cm for sharp sand) we need to compact to about an 18cm depth. (For reference, the overall depth ranges from 22cm to 34cm).

The sides of the excavation are soil. We intend putting a brick edging around the drive to contain the Nidaplast and gravel.

The question is, does the Type 1 need to be contained with some type of edging, i.e. a concrete border (and if so does it actually need to be deeper than the base of the Type 1?), or can the Type 1 be put straight into the hole and compacted (and then the brick edgind laid on top of the Type 1?).

If it helps I have provided a couple of images of the area

Front to back view of excavated drive (216KB)
Side on view of excavated drive (265KB)
Back to front view of excavated drive (241KB)

(The pipes visible in the images have been dug into a trench and surrounded with sharp sand, the mains water stop cock has been realigned and the man hole is to be repaired.)

Thank you for your help on this.

Kind regards,

Tom

Posted: **Tue Aug 21, 2007 11:43 am**

Does the edging page help with your queries? I'm not sure how the edge course varies wrt gravel vs block ...

Ian

Posted: **Tue Aug 21, 2007 12:08 pm**

Thanks very much. There's so much great information on this site that this was a piece I hadn't yet read (or missed/overlooked).

Based on the information in the above page, we should lay our sub base to a level where we then need to lay the concrete mass and edging brick. (It'll be interesting to work out how we create a 75mm 'border' on the outside edge as technically this would be over our boundry.

With regard to guidelines relating to gravel v block, from what the people at Cedar Nursery said, you apply similar rules. For example, we need a new man hole cover (as you may have seen) and wondered about one that took gravel so it was more discrete, and they said just buy the one for block paving.

Thanks for the pointer. This has been a real help. (More reading to be done before Friday.)

Kind regards,

Tom

Posted: **Sat Aug 25, 2007 3:26 am**

Tom -whichever route you take, do recommend you stay within your boundary - have seen what were friendly neighbours, fall out big time over 100mm.
Allthe best.

Posted: **Tue Aug 28, 2007 2:29 pm**

Suggers - thanks for the warning. We noticed when starting the work and laying out the strings that the old wooden picket fence didn't quite follow a straight line so we spoke to our neighbour and asked if he'd mind if we went slightly under the fencing in order to maintain a straight line which would make laying the edging easier (the actual fence is about 3 inches thick with pickets and rails - not including the 6' x 4' posts). He was very understanding and even let me do some of the work from his garden. Lesson there is talk to your neighbour first - thanks for the advice.

The Brew Cabin

Edging before or after sub-base - How deep does edging need to be?