What is the size of the area?
A certain amount of the cost of a resin driveway is fixed, regardless of the size, such as fuel costs getting to and from the site. For this reason the square meter rate will reduce as the area increases and conversely the rate will increase as the area reduces.
What is the size of the aggregate and the depth?
There are a number of different size aggregates available on the market. These range from a 1-2mm aggregate, all the way to a 10mm aggregate. The rule of thumb is that the depth must be 3 times the largest aggregate size, so a 2-5mm aggregate would be installed at 15mm, while a 10mm aggregate would have to be installed at 30mm. Driveways are normally installed with a 1-5mm variation in aggregate size, and at a depth of 15mm.
What driveway surface do you currently have?
Another resin driveway cost factor will depend on your existing driveway surface. This is probably the single most important cost driver. We’ll need to take into account the amount of preparation, surface repair, cleaning and levelling required to the sub base of the drive. You may have a tarmac driveway, a concrete drive, block paving or even a grassed area, all these will take a certain amount of preparation work.
For a grassed or stoned area, the area itself would need to be excavated, a compacted stone based installed, before installing a porous asphalt. Quite often, this work can be more expensive than the resin bound surface work.
Do you need a UV stable or non UV stable resin?’
As you may have guessed, there are two resins available on the market and your choice of which will affect how much a resin drive costs. If you’re looking to save costs, but the Non UV resin is approximately half the price of UV resin, so the metre rate will be much reduced for this resin. Do you want to protect your aggregate from discoloration or are you just looking for something functional and not too concerned about colour change?
If you use a Non UV resin you must expect the surface to yellow over time. Not necessarily a problem if you use a yellow or golden stone, but you will notice it if you leave say a planter on the drive and then move it later, you will see where it has been.
Do you need to install edging on the site?
You’ll find that if you want to maintain a neat and high-quality finish, you’ll need some form of edge restraint. This can be almost any type of existing edge, such as bricks, paving slabs, timber or a wall. However, if there are no edges, these can be installed.
What is the layout of the installation area?
Some driveways may have awkward layouts with some areas harder to access to apply a smooth even finish. The layout of the area will need to be inspected to make sure we can deliver an installation of the highest quality.
Is resin bound SUDS (sustainable urban drainage system) compliant?
In the natural world, most surfaces are porous or permeable. That is to say that when rainwater settles on grass, earth, sand etc it will drain through the surface and eventually find it’s way back to the water table.
Similarly, there are man-made surfaces that can or cannot behave in a similar way. One obvious example of a surface that does not behave like this is concrete. Often concrete surfaces will be designed with a fall to a drainage system to take away the surface water. Hence for these type of surfaces, one has to think about the management of that water.
A surface that is SUDS compliant will allow water to permeate through it and back into the water table. If a resin bound driveway (normally installed around 16-18mm) is laid upon a porous surface then the water will permeate through the small pores between the stones and then through the sub-base below and back into the water table.
Of course, if you were to install a resin bound surface on top of a concrete surface, then the water would permeate through the resin bound surface but would not be able to pass through the concrete and would therefore either sit in the surface or drain in the direction of the fall.
