NEW DRIVEWAY

Pssst! Don’t tell my boss but I ordered my ACO ground grids from Ebay as they’re a pound cheaper per grid than we sell them at work. Got to save those pennies haven’t you?

It’s surprising just how many grids a landscaping project like ours ended up needing - 31 in total and interesting to see how the costs stack up even for what I thought was a small job:

Heavy duty weed membrane 2m x 10 m roll £21

9 x bags of ballast/sand to form a base for grids £18

31 x ACO grids £130

17 x bags of 10 mm limestone chippings £85

Total cost of drive refurbishment £254

That’s what we’ve spent so far and doesn’t include all those miscellaneous bits and bobs such as landscaping nails/staples to hold the membrane and grids in place that you often forget about. These little things can add as much to a project as coffee and dessert do to your restaurant bill on a good night out and fatties like me always love to have a wicked ice cream sundae after a nosh up.

Even with a lot of online research and savvy shopping around, thanks to the pandemic and Brexit, the cost of everything DIY has shot up higher than a return rail ticket to Diddly Squat. According to The Times newspaper, wages have increased by around 7% which is probably true if you’re a plastic surgeon, private dentist or painter & decorator but this muggle has a job to balance the books at the end of most months having foregone a pay-rise for the past 3 years.

It’s not difficult for the cost of projects to escalate if you’re not careful or you’ve let your imagination run wild but bear in mind that at £254 our finished driveway will still be a lot, lot cheaper than getting it block paved or employing a landscaping company to do the same work.

Rant about rising prices over, we laid a nice thick layer of sand & ballast down on top of the weed membrane on which to lay the grids which we’re going to secure in place with 150 mm long nails.

Nice sandy base

This landscaping sandwich will be filled with 10mm limestone chippings. For a big project, it would pay to buy a huge bulk bag of aggregates but as we’re not really sure of the quantity of gravel needed then I’ve decided to buy large individual bags from Wickes. £5 per bag is not too unreasonable and it’s probably less wasteful to just buy what you need and means you can spread the cost out over several pay days.

You're gonna need more bags

Wickes chippings are a nice medium grey colour (green bag) and the 10 mm size is small enough to neatly fill each of the individual sections of the plastic grids.

Green bags grey chippings, blue bags are lighter in colour

I purchased the chippings in store as often aggregate colours shown online can be misleading so if you are particularly fussy like I am then it may be best to shop in person.

Colours can vary from online photos

Never under estimate the time it takes to do simple jobs such as filling plastic grids with chippings. Ours took two half days to secure the grids and fill but if you do it properly the end result is quite professional even for non-landscapers like us. Only an earthquake is going to rock these grids out of place and thankfully there’s none of those in Chichester.