Forums Forums Wirral Information Wirral info imprinted concrete or Tarmac ??

Hi,
I'm wanting the front and rear of my house (half the rear carden and around my outhouse) resurfacing. Its currently a mixture of old concrete with tones of gravel ontop.

Had a price of £8200 +vat for imprinted concrete (steve @ cobblestone) and £6000+vat for black tarmac with red fleck and block pave edging (steve @ molloys). This includes to small walls either side my rear drive as its sort of cut out of the existing concrete at a steep angle.

Can I have people opinion on this please. My house is an old sandstone lodge. I'm thinking of going a sort of grey slate effect for the concrete colour, not sure on the pattern though.

Ouch, that's a lot of money... Any reason why you have discounted more traditional style paving, maybe livened up with occasional inserts of blocks of setts or cobbles? To me, neither of the suggested finishes sounds very sympathetic to an old sandstone lodge. Also, if any services run under the areas, those finishes would be hard to patch successfully if work was needed at some point. Good luck with making your decision; you're going to have the surface there for a long time, so it's worth some serious thought.

Hi, it's not just a flat square area, there would be many many cuts for flag stones, plus I think the flagging would look less traditional than imprinted concrete done it a traditional colour/pattern. You can get old cobble look for instance, or slate effect.
Also the maintenance is far less, I'm quite lazy at gardening and don't fancy weeds coming through the gaps or the fact u have to jet wash the free off traditional flags. With the area being so large I don't see that being much cheaper?
But you are right it's a lot of money and that why I'm finding it hard to make my mind up!
I've got someone else coming tomorrow to quote me for imprinted concrete (Wrexham concrete)

Any idea on the m2 .

Block paving looks nice but the weeds will get into all the joints over time unless you regularly spray with weedkiller. Having the blocks sealed will slow the weeds down.

suggest you go and have a long walk admiring the varieties of drveways

Sorry, I thought I'd stated the m2.
It's 131m2 total (106rear 25ftont) they merge at the side of the house so it's the Same job really, but I just had the rear costed originally.

Yep can't be bothered with block paving and the eventual upkeep.

Have used Steve a number of times for private and commercial work very good.

Steer of the others no where near as professional for service.

Your price is fine infact I first used him 2008 and that price was £5 mtr more than your current price.

OK thanks for the info, I've Wrexham Concrete coming round today to quote also. So will see what they say but I was impressed with steve.

Be interesting to know what the cost differences were. With regard to the colour, looking around when I was choosing, I noticed that the blacker the drive was, the more it showed up the muddy tyre marks when they dried pale after a filthy day . So probably it wouldnt be as noticeable with the lighter slate colour.

The brick/terracotta colour looks quite good , they hand chuck a slightly different darker blending colour randomly across it to give an older looking finish.Thats the only part I would have actually liked to have been a little less randomly done,its a little too much in some places and a bit lightly done in others. If Id known beforehand, I would have mentioned that I wanted it distributed more evenly .

Wrexham concrete are a bit over a grand more expensive plus they wouldn't do the 2 small walls for that price, but claim to do a much more modern method that is much harder wearing.

Once back at the office the salesman's boss called me (yes that old trick) and eventually stated he slightly beat the other price I have but only for there cheapest option (they have 3) and said they would do the walls - didn't seem to have any confidence in wanting to do the walls.

Very informative salesman, but I suppose that's his job, Prob a bit of bull involved too.
Think I'm going to stick with Steve @ cobblestone once I've seen some examples he's done.