Permeable paving for driveway?

[beancounting]

Has anyone any experience of permeable paving on a driveway? The sort of thing we've seen online is a sort of plastic grid which grass is supposed to grow through, in the pictures it looks lovely and less harsh than Tarmac/block paving but I don't think I've ever seen any in real life. I also have visions of the grass not growing so basically being left with a driveway made of lumpy plastic.

Our drive slopes quite steeply towards the house so anything which encourages water to sink into the ground rather than swoosh downhill and pool around the front door would be good.

Any thoughts welcome!

[snowgirl1]

We don't have this at home, but the company I work for had an office in Belgium that used to have this. Looked quite nice on the parking spaces that weren't parked on all the time - those spaces got plenty of light so the grass could grow. On the parking spaces that people parked on a lot, not much grass grew so you could clearly see the plastic honeycomb grid thing which wasn't quite as attractive. Probably works best if your cars are off the drive a lot, ie. you're out at work during daylight hours.

I've also seen (on a new build I drove past) the honeycomb plastic grid with gravel - presumably to stop the gravel moving around. Might be an option as gravel would allow water to drain - but might also roll down into a big pile by your front door...

If you're getting the driveway done, couldn't you just get a drain fitted to drain away any pools? We're going to get our drive done one day and DH is adamant there's going to be a drain running along the front of the garage to prevent a puddle of water from our almost level driveway getting a few inches into his beloved garage.

[snowgirl1]

Oh, forgot to mention we're also considering resin bound gravel (something like this which alledgedly allows water to drain through it.

[RelocatorRelocator]

My neighbour has this kind of drive and the black bits are very clearly visible. Gravel is another option, although I suppose it might migrate down the slope! Or could you put a flower bed in and/or a drain in the ground?

[Nocomet]

We have must have been graveled a 1000 years ago, sandy soil and grass.

Works perfectly well normally, but we had 200% rainfall this winter, so it's been a bit muddy.

[FlyLikeABird]

We fitted the grids and gravel and it looks great and hasn't moved about. However the grid is staring to show through as the car has compacted the gravel so I will add another layer of gravel (I was expecting this to happen). I did use quite a coarse pale cream stone so a smaller grade would probably not reveal the grid as much. It is very fast to lay too!

I'm happy with it but if I had had the funds I would have had bonded gravel.

[beancounting]

Thanks all, I like gravel but had ruled it out on the basis that it would all end up in a heap at the bottom ( also rubbish for pushchairs...), but the bonded gravel thing sounds great - will investigate that further and hope it's not out of our budget. If it is then maybe we'll just have to look at drainage...