Gravelrings
Gravel grid system
After two years of repeatedly redistributing gravel that was migrating downhill on his long and sloping driveway, a Norfolk homeowner was looking for a better solution. With Gravelrings now installed, the drive looks much neater, and the gravel is staying exactly where it was placed with no need to spend hours every week raking it back up the drive.
A curved and sloping gravel drive leads up to a four-bedroom, detached home in Norfolk, built in the Victorian era. Back then, it would have been mostly horse-drawn carriages using the drive but in the 21st century, the house’s owner was finding that driving cars up and down the drive was causing problems.
With a large section of the driveway being at a 1 in 5 gradient, the movement of cars up and down the drive was pushing the gravel towards the bottom of the slope. Additionally, the pressure from the tyres was causing rutting of the gravel layer and subsequent damage to the subbase beneath.
The owner, who had bought the property a couple of years earlier, was forced to regularly redistribute the gravel to maintain both the appearance and the functionality of the drive. And, since the drive is 15m long, that was adding up to a lot of time and effort.
One of the challenges of using grids on a steeply sloping drive is that the grids may slip down the slope or become detached from each other at joints. That doesn’t happen with Gravelrings, since the grids clip together and lock into the sub-base – which is more secure than an interlocking connection – and are then pinned into place using 200mm-long galvanised steel pins.
Landscaping specialist Adrian Griffiths installed the new drive and area in front of the house, 163 sq m in all. The rings sit on top of a 150mm-deep layer of good quality type 1 subbase, with a blinding layer of sharp sand.
The type of aggregate used for this driveway was crucial. If the aggregate in the gravel had been too rounded, it could still have slipped down the slope, revealing the grid – as the homeowner had observed on the drive of a nearby hotel. To mitigate this risk, Beauxfort’s technical team specified angular aggregate, which locks together well once compacted.
With the works completed, the homeowner always returns home to a neat and tidy driveway that is easy to drive up. He has now got back a few hours each weekend and doesn’t have the stress of having to keep it in place!
