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DIY Driveway Paving Repair: How I Relayed 1000 Bricks by Hand and Fixed a 20-Year-Old Project Alone.


A Long Way to Driveway


This post is about what I did to repair the driveway where I live. Me and my family built this over 20 years ago and as such it was in desperate need of renovation. I wanted to do this project for a long time, but never had the time, tools or money to fix it. Such is life, there's always something to do and other things just seem more important at the time.


Luckily for this poor driveway It was bumped up my list of priorities. Below you can see the before and after photos;


Driveway Before Relaying
Driveway Before Relaying
Driveway After Relaying
Driveway After Relaying

Wacker Worries


I wanted to complete this project years ago. But couldn’t for many reasons. Including I didn’t have a wacker-plate (plate compactor) of my own. That changed when I visited Husseys Auction Centre near Exeter. I came home with my very own Wacker Neuson plate compactor. Specifically I won at auction the BBS 1153 model with water suppression. Immediately though the belt snapped and I had to find a replacement. Then that belt snapped, so after a long convoluted way around fixing the damn machine, I finally got a belt that fits the machine properly. in the picture the belt cover is off. Apart from being dangerous, I wasn't confidant the belt would last long, so I left it off until it snapped that second time.


Old Neuson Wacker BPS1153aw
Old Neuson Wacker BPS1153aw


 After all that commotion I managed to actually begin the repair. Before I write about that, here are some more before photos of the old driveway. You can see that its moved and sank in places. This is to be expected considering the age of the paving.


Grass Growing In Driveway
Grass Growing In Driveway
Uneven Paving In Driveway
Uneven Paving In Driveway

Lidl for the win (wash)


I started by jet-washing the driveway with my quite excellent Parkside Petrol Pressure Washer acquired from Lidl. This removed all the moss, old sand, grass and grime from the paving. I also jet-washed the pavement (side walk) part of the driveway to make everything look fancy. I used the 15 Deg nozzle; one of five that came with the machine. Then I connected it to the mains water supply, without the detergent injection filled up. I later repaired the old weed ridden sidewalk with a bag of Tarmac Cold lay Ready mixed Macadam.



A Bugs Strife


My main problem now was the fact the ants over the years have made the driveway uneven. Paving should be laid on a grit and not sand. Unfortunately where I live this type of grit is really hard to get hold of in quantities needed for a driveway, so many people use the next best thing; Sharp sand. Sharp sand is a mixture of large and small particles of sand. This means that there is less air when compacted, resulting in a strong substrata to lay the paving on. The one weakness to this method of construction is bugs. Ants burrow into the gaps between the paving and dig up the smaller particles of sand. This driveway lasted 20-25+ years. So I am not worried about ants attacking it and it not lasting another quarter of a century after I relay it. Sharp sand is fine for most home applications.


Driveway missing the old bricks
Driveway missing the old bricks

Professional Scrubber


The part I wasn't looking forward to the most was pulling up over one thousand paving bricks and cleaning the four sides the jet wash couldn’t reach and, the bottom by hand. That's over five thousand bits of cleaning with nothing but a wire brush and my trusty Makita DMR104 DAB Radio for company.


1000 paving bricks
1000 paving bricks

Yabba Dabba Lets Do It!


The next job was to spread and compact the sand. I used just under a ton of sand to level the driveway. This was delivered by HIAB. For those of you not in the UK a HIAB is a truck (or lorry) equipped with a hydraulically powered crane, allowing it to both transport and lift heavy loads. I ordered a ton dumpy bag of sand for the driveway and a ton of the flint stone chippings. I needed the chippings because after I level the driveway, I don’t want my truck to roll off the edge of the paving and drop a little. This could result in the paving on the edge tipping.


stone chippings level with paving
stone chippings level with paving


What A Drag


After compacting the sand I made bays by screeding and floating the compacted sand. Screeding is the process of dragging back the compacted sand to the finished height. Floating is like rendering (it can be a part of rendering too) but on the ground rather than a wall. You rub small bits of sand into the screeded surface fill in the imperfections and remove sand in places that’s too high.

The aim is to obtain a suitable depth for paving from one end of the driveway repair to the other. I achieved this by pulling a string line taught and using a paving brick as a float. This gives me the perfect height from one end to the other.


Paving Gauging The Depth Of Sand
Paving Gauging The Depth Of Sand
A Screed bay Formed In Sand
A Screed bay Formed In Sand

Every time I pull the sand back a meter or so I will compact it again. This is ultra important to achieve a long lasting finish.

I took care to leave the sand a little high on the street side. This allows for compaction when the wacker is driven over the paving to shake in the kiln dry sand.



Slippy Sand


After I relaid the driveway I covered it in a special sand called Kiln Dry Sand. This is the special sauce that bonds the paving together. after I sanded it the first time, I sanded it twice more. Each time I sanded it, I used my wacker plate to vibrate the sand between the gaps, like sand falling through an hour glass (essentially its the same sand). Making sure there was no water in the tank otherwise the paving bricks might crack in half.


Sanding A Newly Laid Driveway
Sanding A Newly Laid Driveway

Special Feature.


The corner of the driveway, the corner closest to the gravel was the part that irritated me the most, it always seemed like an afterthought or just not well thought out. I always wanted the corner to taper off rather than abruptly change direction. To me it injects a little floral femininity into the design akin to the art nouveau flourishes I loved learning about at university. It is a garden after all.

I cut the grey paving individually with my disk cutter after marking them around the curve I cut before hand. I then laid the black paving on sand and cement along the edge so the sand was retained behind it. Afterwards I added a mortar fillet (triangle of sand and cement) to the edge to give the paving lateral strength. Then covered it up with the gravel, to finish the job.


Sharp Corner Afterthought
Sharp Corner Afterthought
Designed Curved Paving Corner
Designed Curved Paving Corner

Drive Safe


Now that it’s done, I can honestly say I’m proud of the transformation. What started as a patchy, ant-riddled, uneven mess has become something I’m happy to drive on—and show off here. This project reminded me that fixing something properly takes time, effort, and a bit of stubbornness. Even if it means breaking belts, brushing bricks for hours, and rethinking the design half way through making something.


It’s more than just a driveway — it's a piece of home history made by me and my family, now renewed with care. Every brick I scrubbed, every inch I compacted. — it's all part of reclaiming the space from being lost and slowly adding to the history of the property in a positive way.


Thanks for reading. If you're planning your own paving renovation project, I hope this post shows that with a bit of persistence (and maybe a lot of tools), you can take on a job at home and make it better than before.







 
 
 

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