Concrete Driveways in Kent

Depth follows the heaviest thing that will ever stand on it, not the car that lives there now. A domestic drive taking cars is commonly laid at 100mm over a compacted sub-base. A drive that will take a van, a horsebox, a caravan or a delivery lorry goes deeper, and a commercial hardstanding is designed rather than assumed.

The sub-base matters as much as the slab. Concrete laid straight onto soft ground cracks along the soft part however thick it is, so the sub-base is compacted in layers before anything is poured.

Which mix a driveway needs

BS 8500 has a designated mix for exactly this job. PAV1 is the standard external paving concrete for domestic use, and PAV2 is its heavier-duty equivalent for commercial hardstanding and industrial yards.

What makes them different from a general mix is air entrainment. Deliberately introduced air voids give the set concrete somewhere to expand into when water inside it freezes, which is what resists freeze-thaw scaling. That matters on a driveway because a driveway is outside, gets wet, and in some households gets salted. An ordinary indoor-grade mix laid on a drive will surface-scale within a few winters.

Drainage, planning and surface water

The permitted development rules changed in England in October 2008. Laying an impermeable surface of more than five square metres between the front of a house and the highway needs planning permission, unless the surface water runs to a permeable area within the property rather than into the road.

Concrete is impermeable, so a concrete drive has to deal with its own water. In practice that means laying it to a fall towards a permeable border, a soakaway, or a drainage channel that discharges within your boundary. Your local planning authority is Medway Council, or your district council elsewhere in Kent, and they will confirm what your particular frontage needs.

Reinforcement, joints and the finish

Steel mesh on spacers is the usual reinforcement on a domestic drive, and fibre-reinforced mixes are an alternative. Neither stops concrete moving. Both control where it cracks.

Joints do the rest. A large area is divided into bays so that shrinkage is taken up at the joints instead of in random cracking across the middle.

The finish is not a matter of taste alone. A driveway wants a brushed or tamped texture for grip. A power-floated surface, which is the right answer for a warehouse floor, is dangerously slippery outdoors in the wet.

Working out driveway volume

Area times depth, in metres. A drive 12 metres long and 3 metres wide at 100mm is 12 x 3 x 0.1, so 3.6 cubic metres.

Most drives are not rectangles. Split an awkward shape into rectangles and triangles, work each one out, then add them. Allow for the parts nobody measures: the apron at the road, the flare where the drive widens at the gate, and the thickened edge where there is no kerb to restrain it.

Getting the concrete onto the drive

A driveway pour is unusual in that the finished surface is also the access route, so the lorry cannot drive on it. The concrete has to be discharged from where the lorry stands and worked outwards from the far end.

That makes frontage the deciding factor: whether a mixer can stand on the road outside, whether it can be there long enough to discharge, whether parked cars leave room, and how far the far corner of the drive is from the kerb. Where the distance beats the chute, the options are barrowing, a smaller mini-mix vehicle making more trips, or a concrete pump. Kent Readymix takes that detail with the enquiry rather than discovering it on the day.

Ordering concrete for a driveway

Send the length and width, the depth, what will park on it, and where a lorry could stand. Your quotation, delivery and payment are agreed directly with the approved supplier appointed to your pour.

One practical note on timing. Do not book a driveway pour into a hard frost. Concrete gains its early strength in the first day, and a surface that freezes before it has that strength scales and dusts permanently. Our approved suppliers will tell you when they would rather move a date, and it is worth listening to.