For years I have been pushing my bikes out of their garage onto a gravel driveway. Always a bit of a chore. Trying to make my life easier, as age advances, I have considered “turntables”, pavors, resin and several others systems but all seem too expensive or not the right answer. I am now considering 40mm Gravel Grids and have a local contractor willing to help in reducing the drive level by 50mm to allow the grids to be laid. A much cheaper option and hopefully would provide a much better surface to wheel a bike on. Has anyone any experience with Gravel Grids and are they the answer to my prayer?
They did the car park at my daughter's school with those about 18 months ago. They scraped the turf off one of the football pitches and layed these plastic grids, filled with a small sharp gravel. It holds about 150 cars and is full every day. The main path in and out shows some signs of wear but the car park itself has held up remarkably well. I personally layed an area of my garden to gravel and wanted to use those grids but in the end I used type one, whacked that down and just put a thin layer of gravel on top. That way only the top inch of gravel can move but you don't sink in anywhere.
The commercial grids are much more substantial the the lighter panels you buy at builders merchants. You still need a compacted stone sub-base under them and ideally they should be level. Grids help keep the gravel in place on a gentle incline but they're far better if it's level. You're right about the depth of shingle. I'm in the building trade and see time and again people making the mistake of laying the shingle layer too thick. It wants to be two pebbles deep - so 40 mm for 20 mm shingle and 20 mm with 10 mm. Any deeper than that and tyres sink into it and the stuff swims about and makes an awful mess. And loose shingle must be laid on a dead level and solid sub-base or it will constantly wash down hill, leaving thick drifts at the bottom and bare patches at the top.
I’ve used grids, you need to use 10mm crushed stone, then it will bed down and bind well. Whatever you do don’t use pebbles or round stones, just crushed and graded.
