Gravel drive - neighbour unhappy

[Nolyty]

We moved into our home last year and inherited a very old, very messy paved front garden. We built an extension on the side of the house where the garage used to be, leaving half the front garden with tarmac.

We managed to scrimp together enough money to get something done at the front. The cheapest option was gravel. We had this done last week and were very happy with ourselves that we'd made our home more presentable.

However...

Our new neighbour spoke with DH today about loose stones going onto the pavement and into the road, potentially damaging cars and the like.
I'm so upset with myself that I didn't think about this before. I just assumed as it was a popular choice for front gardens/drives, we'd be ok.

I don't want to ruin relations with our new neighbour, I certainly don't want to cause a safety issue. I'm really worried we've spent thousands on this project and now we might have to do something different. We're not using it as a drive currently, but had plans to if ever necessary. We'll of course sweep what goes onto the pavement regularly.

I've looked into glue for this kind of thing, but once applied you can't drive over it, so we'd basically not have a drive. It's also very very expensive.

I just don't understand how this has become such a big problem when gravel is so common. I'm not sure whether we stick with it and sweep as best we can, or somehow look to change it (but we have no money to do so...).

Any advice?

As long as you sweep it every so often it's fine.

There's a neighbour down my road whose gravel is all over the pavement and it's quite a wide front. Theyve never swept, horrid spikey gravel. It's really annoying to walk past, especially on summer sandals. Other neighbours have also mentioned it to me- it's not something that's ever bothered me before or I've ever noticed until this house got gravel.

Two adjacent households nearby have, between them, 4 cars and 2 vans. Both have gravelled front gardens/driveways. Walking along even the middle of the narrow road is like walking on a pebble beach, but…. they’re pleasant, busy people and have no intention of inconveniencing their neighbours, so no-one has thought of complaining. There are bigger problems.

I'm clearly going against the grain but can't stand loose gravel driveways!

Our neighbour, 2 doors up have one (all detached homes, so a fair distance from our house). Yes, people apparently love that fact they can hear burglars and people walking on it, but have no consideration for how loud and annoying this is when their cars drive in and out at night or early hours of the morning. Yes, this has woken us.

The pebbles spew onto the road and no, they never sweep them up

Our adjoining neighbours get the gravel thrown onto their grassed area at the front, which have then fly out when mowing

We are renovating and looking at what to do with out front drive area- but gravel would be my absolute, last option. I have no advice I'm afraid, but I can understand your neighbours concerns.

Yep, that's why we changed ours to tarmac so the neighbours' cats had to shit in our garden instead.

Just drive on and off slowly with care, this minimise gravel movement

go out with broom once a week

You could transition it to a gravel plus paved/brick pattern. So squares of gravel within brick borders - it might be possible to make the pattern work for your cars to drive on and not go over the gravel at all - you’d have less spillage then.

Our neighbour next door has the whole front as gravel, so WE have to sweep our driveway often as the birds like to dig in it for worms and spread it around.
There's a couple more down the road and they leave it across the pavement, not great for us with bad eyesight and unsteady on our feet folks.
So please just sweep it up sometimes. It is normal, but keeping the pavements clear takes a little work.

Very normal, ignore. Lots of neighbouring houses here have stones that manage to make their way onto the pavement outside their homes and up the road but no one is really bothered. They do clean it every once in a while.
Your neighbour is just being petty.

There is 'as dug' which should compact

https://www.naturalstoneandtimber.co.uk/product/hoggin-loose/#:~:text=Hoggin%20is%20an%20%E2%80%9Cas%20dug,produce%20a%20hard%20wearing%20surface.

I didn't choose gravel. Too many cats around here, stray cigarette butts and other debris, weed seedlings and moss in the shady corners. Too much maintenance.
I also think gravelled-over front gardens always look a mess.

So I'm not a fan but who cares. Hopefully you'll keep your gravel contained.

Was it 10mm or 20mm Gravel you used? 10mm should never be used for driveways as it gets stuck in shoes and car tyres. Have to echo what others are saying, ignore your neighbours. If they are complaining already about this, you are bound to fall out with them down the line about something else anyway🙄

For the thousands spent, much better to have gone with a concrete print drive.

Nothing wrong with gravel, but concrete is less maintenance. Almost none whatsoever unless re-sealing colourant every few years etc.

Just keep it swept back in every month or so. It'll be fine - and point out it's good for detecting people on your drive in the small hours, will hopefully put off visitors up to no good..

Concrete print is going to be twice the cost of gravel.

Plus at a pinch you can always do gravel yourself if you are strapped for cash. Not so with concrete print.

As a final thing you may need pp to convert to concrete print because you are reducing the surface area for drainage.

It’s all very First World Problems, isn’t it? I agree with the PP who said don’t concede. If you are going to have petty neighbours you REALLY don’t want to back down on the first battle.

I dont know anyone that applies for PP for concrete print. Might be needed, but daresay with the plethora of firms that do it, I doubt any apply for it.

Sure, concrete print is pricey, but its practically zero maintenance forever.

Thanks everyone! The consensus seems to be that we're ok with gravel as it is, phew! Dissenting views have been noted 🙂

For those who asked - the gravel is 20mm.

Sadly concrete not an option for us because it's more expensive and leaves us with a drainage issue to solve. Also my understanding that non-permeable drives might be subject to planning permission, or something like that? We definitely don't have the bandwidth for that at the moment! Newborn and toddler mayhem at home atm!

Chaps doing our patio warned us against concrete print when we asked their opinion about all the options for our drive- they reckoned it was the one thing they'd never choose. It's a real pain if you ever need to dig it up for drains, utilities, etc., I gather. I've also never seen one I liked the look of, but maybe I haven't noticed the nicer ones.

We have gravel. Never been an issue. Just get it edged with bricks if a few random stones bother you.

Thats why they are patio fitters and not driveway installers. They havent got a clue WTF they are on about.

Any drive installer worth his salt checks all that out first and is no different if a tarmac/resin/block paving drive had to be uprooted.

I hope they do a better job of your patio than giving dogshit "advice" like that!

Why so offensive? FYI, they did a fantastic job on a difficult shaped patio with curving retaining walls and complex drainage, where the retaining wall had to be removed and rebuilt- by them. No water stands on the patio, it drains perfectly. They are in fact not primarily 'patio fitters'. They are drainage experts and do a lot of big commercial and heritage projects on paving, walling, drains, and so on.

Also FYI, there is a possibility that we may have to have the mains LX relaid in the future, which is precisely what we were discussing with them. They suggested putting in trunking for both that, and for electric gates, even though we hadn't thought of having electric gates, because they said we ought to make sure we allowed for that in case we wanted them later on. They took the same approach when relaying all our drains on a previous job, so when they did the patio all the drainage points were already there and ready. So you're pretty much 100% wrong on just about everything.
PS digging up gravel is easier than digging up imprinted concrete, I think you will find.

My neighbour used a resin gravel binder on the front of his drive to stop the gravel spreading on the pavement.

We used to have a long gravel drive, but no neighbors. I loved the sound of it . It made delivery people drive slowly over it to avoid disrupting stones. Perfect solution for drainage too. Ignore your neighbor. They are jealous.

It should be possible to put some sort of entrance grid along the front of the driveway to keep the stones in place. I think you can get metal ones.

Plus actually sweep them up once in a while.

It has millions of bits of loose grit though that get tracked into your house, awful stuff.