How Much Does it Cost to Lay a Driveway?

Job Costs

Job	Description	Labour
1	Laying a straight 10 metre concrete driveway from the pavement to a line level with the front of your house. This will take 2 men 3 days	£825
	Plus materials, tipping etc. for the above	£800
2	Same as above with edging and paviors on top. So it’s a deeper foundation This will take 2 men 6 days.	£1650
	Plus materials, tipping etc. for the above	£1600
3	If you want to convert your front garden to be the same as that one up the road. You know, great sweeping swathes of top quality paviors, all edged and lovely. Maybe it also has his and her BMW’s. No doubt there will also be a ridiculous lamp post on the inside of the bend. Firstly you will have to be made redundant like he was, then you will have to either swallow your pride and just be a copycat or go just that bit further and have a pond and a concrete heron squeezed in, just in front of a nice rockery full of highland ferns...delightful!	£6500

“Labour” at £175 a day (tradesman) £100 (labourer), includes incidental fixings etc. and tipping charges. “Materials” if mentioned, are larger things (a boiler) and stuff only you can choose (tiles etc). Also VAT must be added all round.

Information Sheet on Laying a Driveway

Isn’t there a move to stop people converting their front gardens to car parking? Something about aquifers! Maybe this wouldn’t be necessary if traffic wardens weren’t so conscientious! or yellow lines weren’t so prolific, or if every house didn’t have 4 cars. In my day, teenagers didn’t need cars because we had buses.

Where was I? Oh yes, reasons why we all have to park in our front flower beds nowadays. Well, I think I’ve just about covered them.

Driveway Construction

Cars are heavier than we are, so consequently a good foundation is essential and that means digging down. Assuming the new driveway has paviour bricks as the top layer, that means going down probably 13 inches. That’s 3′ for the paviours, 2′ for the sand underneath them, 4′ for the concrete under that, and finally, 4′ for the hardcore under that. Anything less and you will get two nice straight mysterious grooves in about 3 years time. Funnily enough they will run all the way to the place where you park the car.

While You’re Down There…

Besides the driveway, you may also want to convert the front wall and put double gates in. Why do we do that when opening and shutting the blessed things is a nightmare. After all, the front wall is only 30” high, so they don’t exactly keep anyone out. Someone said it stops litter getting in. Therefore, pick it up for heaven’s sake and save yourself £1000. Additionally, you or your wife will only drive into them within a week anyway!

Then there’s the dropped kerb. You have to apply to the council for permission to convert it because you can’t legally drive over the pavement. In fact unless they give permission for a crossover and they don’t always nowadays, (remember those aquifers) and since you don’t want to break the law twice a day, you will be wasting your money on the driveway. Consequently, my advice is to apply for one first and see what happens!

Last time I looked, dropped kerbs cost about £750 by the way.

FAQs 'traffic light' guide

What's easy about this job…
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Simple for a specialist firm

What's tricky about this job…
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Preparation and levels need to be spot on.

Potential problems with regards to this job…
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NEVER EVER get someone to do your driveway who knocks on your door and says they are 'working locally in the area' and can do the work quickly and for cash.