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I am about to start trying to tide up the house driveway, neglected since builders finished a year ago and want to use gravel. It's on a slight slope and so need to stop the 14mm gravel redistributing itself all over the road. I've used this for down the side of the house:
It does a great job but it's so flippin expensive for a bit of plastic you will never see and I need 22m2. I've googled and this seems to be the best price unless anyone knows better or of an alternative?
Concrete
Something other than gravel +1
We have an almost perfectly flat gravel drive, it still all ends up in patches where the cars go round the corner and flick stones to the outside.
Got a guy to give us a quote to replace it with anything else and he said that TBH there isn't a whole lot in it, by the time you've got a digger in and dug up the old one, put hardcore down, sand, membranes, etc, the choice of gravel, bonded gravel, brick, tarmac, flagstones etc doesn't actually make much of a difference.
It'll be getting bricked over at some point, unless we move before we get around to it, in which case it'll get gallon of concentrated roundup and a rake which seems to be what the last owners must have done as it's practically grass in places a year later!
We looked at gravel when we finally got round to replacing the solid concrete monstrosity that was our driveway. In the end, we went with an aggregate - it's fancy name is something like Cotswold Buff but essentially it's a sandy, cream stone you can buy in a variety of sizes. This means that it can be semi-compacted and doesn't end up everywhere in drifts.
Growing up, along with mowing the lawns, my brothers and I were often press-ganged into carting gravel back from the road, and onto our steep gravel driveway where it 'belonged' (despite nature and gravities best endeavours). It got previous pretty quickly.
Crushed slate moves around less than gravel.
Thanks for the answers - classic STW though - ignore what question is and recommend something different they have :->
I already have gravel round the side and back of the house as it suits the period building. So the drive is going to be gravel, to match. I also have a solution - the white plastic matting works very well and will stop the gravel washing onto the road off the slight gradient.
I just can't believe it's so expensive to get hold of so the post was to see if there's a cheap source or some cleaver homebrew alternative.
unless anyone knows better or of an alternative?
Didn't read that way.
ahh oops - I meant alternative to the stabilisation product I linked to, not an alternative to gravel.
Neighbour stripped most of the gravel off, put a huge pile of dry sand and cement mix on, smoothed it all down, then chucked the gravel back on, raked it, rolled it and then let it settle for a few days (with a bit of hose pipe/sprinkler work)
He still loses gravel. But rather than having to collect most of a barrow full a week. Its a quick run round with a broom once a month. Has broken up a bit round the edges but it looks like a 10-15 minute job to tidy up and fix. (which i guess he does, but i've not seen him doing it)
Most definitely a bodge, but it's been like that 5 or 6 years and still looks ok (it still looks like a gravel drive) It's also about 50 sqm. Took bloody ages to get all the gravel up.