Gravel driveway - £9k !!!

[EezyOozy]

Hello all,

i’m currently getting quotes for a gravel driveway to be renewed.

It’s a mixture of mud and various grass at the moment, with a few potholes. It all needs scraping out and redoing.

I had somebody round today to do a quote and it was £9000! It’s about 100 m² of drive, in a rectangle shape.

I had another quote a couple of days ago that was nearly £6000.

The difference between the two of seems to be that the higher quote allowed for a whacker plated sub base layer and also included skip hire. And said 2-3 men for two weeks…..

The cheaper quote omitted skip hire and just included a weed membrane under the gravel. And said 2 men got 5 days.

I naively thought it might be about £3000….

Im in rural Scotland , now where near a city …. Not a high expensive place to live.

Would people mind sharing what they have paid ? Any advice welcomed.

Thanks :)

Unfortunately I have learnt my lesson when we had our driveway done: do it cheap, do it twice.

Have you priced up the gravel? You have the area but would need to determine the depth to work out the m3.

I'm not sure it is crazy priced because material costs have rocketed and so has waste disposal, via skips. First step would be clear existing gravel using a digger and excavating to a suitable depth, lay a membrane and some drainage work. Once the base is prepared they lay the sub base, install edging and then finally the gravel. If you consider the different layers there is a fair amount of digging out and levelling so going over the same area multiple times.

Costs will include a digger for several days and maybe several skips or a grab lorry. That's likely to be close to 1-2k. Materials could be close £3-5k, depending on gravel, edging and depth. Then add labour on top..£250 a day X 10 man days. You could price up the costs of a man & digger for a day. Due to h&s operators should be trained and insured.

£3k is unrealistic as it allows £1k for plant, £1k for materials and £1k labour (5 man days at most).

I think the £9k is more realistic but could be little cheaper. A contractor has to allow for bad weather slowing down progress so labour maybe slightly overstated. Pavingexpert website is excellent for information and calculators.

@Livinghappy surely you would use the existing gravel as it would mingle with the new. Seems wasteful to skip a material that could be used.

I'm just looking at doing the same, though not till next year. Online estimates seem to vary between 2,5000 and 4,000 for 80 sq m, if dug out and proper base and edging. I very much doubt that's realistic, I'd expect more like 6K upwards. Ours, like yours, will be bigger; when we moved here a few years ago pre covid I reckoned about 8K-14K for the various options (slabs, tarmac, resin, gravel) with gravel at the bottom end, and I reckon prices could easily end up 40% higher now than back then.
We'll hopefully be getting it done by the people who did our drains and other works, and TBH we'll just pay what they quote, as we know they do a really good job of everything. I like to pay only once for jobs, as another poster said. They'll be doing our patio this year- again, whatever they charge. I 100% trust them not to rip us off. A detailed quote for our drains was about 14K from a different firm, but our lot did the job for about 11K and did a very thorough job of it with top quality materials and they forethought the need for extra drain points in the future and laid them at the same time.

We scraped ours out, it’s a long drive, and replaced with tarmac a few years ago. 7k. It’s much better, no weeds, no car groves, no ice pockets, no sycamore sprouts. Best thing ever. Yorkshire.

Yep! 😊

Assuming 100m2, you would need 30 tonnes of Type 1 for the sub base and 10 tonnes of gravel for the finished surface. A local gravel would be somewhere around £350.00 to £400.00 + VAT and the Type 1 £1000ish + VAT. The prices will of course depend on where you are located. It really depends on how much digging out/disposal there is to be done but £9000.00 sounds way too much.