Resin bound & resin bonded driveways in Macclesfield

There are two resin systems and they are not the same product, even though the trade uses the names loosely and homeowners are routinely sold one while thinking they are getting the other. Resin bound is aggregate mixed with resin in a forced-action mixer and trowelled out as a solid, smooth, permeable mat. Resin bonded is a coat of resin spread on the base with dry aggregate scattered onto it, which gives a rougher, loose-looking finish that is not permeable.

Resin bound is what most people picture and what most people want. It is smooth enough to wheel a pushchair or a bin over, it has no joints for weeds to find, and because water passes straight through it, it usually keeps a front garden inside permitted development without any drainage works at all. That last point is worth real money in a town with Macclesfield's surface-water record.

It is an overlay system, though, and that is the thing to be clear about. Resin bound is normally laid 15–18mm thick onto a sound, stable, well-drained base of tarmac or concrete — it contributes almost nothing structurally. Laid over a cracked or moving base it will crack in the same places, usually within the first year, and no amount of good resin work fixes a base problem. Where there is no suitable base, one has to be built first, which makes it a two-stage job.

The failures worth knowing about are all avoidable and all down to workmanship or weather. Laying in the wet or in the cold gives you a surface that never fully cures and goes patchy or soft. Getting the resin-to-aggregate ratio wrong gives you loose stone that comes away underfoot. And laying a permeable surface over an impermeable base with nowhere for the water to go simply moves the puddle from the top to the bottom.