New driveways & driveway replacement in Macclesfield

A driveway is roughly nine-tenths groundwork and one-tenth the bit you look at. What decides whether it lasts five years or twenty-five is the excavation, the compaction, the sub-base and where the water goes — and none of that is visible on the day it is handed over. That is the honest reason two quotes for the same drive can be thousands apart, and why the cheaper one is very often quoting a shallower hole.

The sequence barely changes whatever the surface. Dig out to a depth set by the ground and the traffic, put a geotextile membrane down if the subgrade is soft, build back up in compacted layers of crushed stone, form and haunch the edges, then lay the surface on top. Tarmac, blocks, resin and imprinted concrete all sit on that same build-up. Choose the surface last, after the drainage and the levels are settled.

Not every tired drive needs replacing. A sound concrete or tarmac base with a scruffy surface is a resurfacing job, and resin or a tarmac overlay will take twenty years off how it looks for a fraction of a full rebuild. A base that is moving, cracked through and holding water is not — putting a new surface on that is money spent twice, and it will telegraph the old cracks through within a couple of winters.

The drainage question is not optional here, and it is not just good practice. Since October 2008 an impermeable surface of more than five square metres in a front garden has needed planning permission unless the water is drained to somewhere permeable within your own boundary. In Macclesfield that rule bites harder than it does elsewhere: Cheshire East's flood risk assessment names the town as the borough's only designated Flood Risk Area, with 47 internal flooding incidents recorded since 2011.