The Sunken Tyre Tracks: Why Block Paving Drops
You pay for a flat driveway, but by spring there are two massive dips where you park the car. Here is why cheap groundworks fail.
The Big Dips
We get called out to this all the time. A driveway looks perfectly flat on the day it gets laid.
But a Range Rover or a work van is heavy, and you park it in the exact same spot every day. If the base isn't solid, the weight just pushes the blocks straight down. Give it a few months, and you've got two big dips holding rainwater exactly where the wheels sit.
Skipping the Dig
The blocks themselves are fine. It’s what is underneath that failed.
A lot of blokes price a job cheap because they don't want to dig. They scrape the grass off, chuck some sharp sand down, and lay the bricks right over the dirt. It looks level when they take your money. But sand washes away in the rain, and soft mud can't hold up a heavy car.
Heavy Hardcore
The only thing that stops a driveway sinking is the hardcore underneath it.
We bring the diggers in and take the ground right out. We load it with heavy MOT Type 1 stone and hammer it down with a wacker plate until it’s like solid rock.
Once the blocks go down on a compacted stone base, they are locked. You can park a heavy van on that exact spot every single day, and the blocks won't budge.
Stop by the office at 78 Alma Rd, Bournemouth BH9 1AN, UK, or call 07835 390845.
