How we quote
Driveways is a trade people get stung in. Here is how we arrive at a price, what lands on the sheet, and what we will not do.
- Family owned business Mark and a small team. The person who prices your job is the person on site building it.
- Free no obligation quotations We come out, look at the ground and measure up. There is no charge for the visit and nothing to commit to afterwards.
- No deposit required Nothing is asked for up front to book a start date.
- Full public liability insurance Cover is in place before anyone starts work on your property.
- 5.0 from 25 Google reviews Every review on our Google Business Profile is a five star one. They are all there to read.
We come and look before we price
Nobody can price a drive down the phone. Two frontages of the same size on the same street can come out at very different money once you know what is under them, where the water goes and whether a machine can get in. A figure given before anybody has seen the ground is a guess, and a guess has to be corrected later, usually once the digger is already there.
So the first step is a visit. We measure up, look at the levels and the fall, work out what is under the current surface, check the access, and talk through what will suit the frontage. The visit is free, the advice on it is free, and it happens whether or not the job ends up being ours.
What the written quotation covers
The price comes back in writing, and it sets out the job rather than giving you a single figure with nothing behind it:
- The area. What we have measured, in square metres.
- What comes out. The existing surface, the dig depth we expect, and the spoil going away.
- What goes in underneath. The sub-base build-up, and anything the ground needs before that.
- Edgings and kerbs. What is being set, and where.
- Drainage. Where the water is going, and what we are putting in to get it there.
- The surface itself. The material, the colour and the pattern you have chosen.
- The price. One figure for the work described, set out so you can read it line by line.
Written out that way, you can put our quotation beside somebody else's and see where the difference actually is. Very often it is the depth of the dig or the drainage, which are the two things a cheap quote leaves out and the two things that decide whether the surface is still flat years later.
Free quotations, and no deposit
Quotations are free and carry no obligation. If you want to think about it, think about it. If you decide against it, or somebody else does it cheaper, that is the end of it.
We do not take a deposit. Nothing is asked for up front to hold a start date and nothing is asked for to get a price.
A written quotation holds for 30 days. If a material price rises after that we will tell you before anything is ordered rather than adjust the figure quietly. All waste from our work goes off site with us, with the exception of plastic waste, which the tip will not take from a contractor and which stays with you.
We carry full public liability insurance, and the work is done by us. The groundwork, the paving and the stone are not sub-contracted, so the person who priced it is the person who turns up to build it. Where a drive is being surfaced in tarmac, that surfacing is laid by our partners.
What moves the price
Five things, and only one of them is visible from the pavement.
- Access. A wide frontage a machine and a grab lorry can reach costs less to dig out than a job where every barrow of spoil goes out through a side gate by hand. This is the biggest single swing on a lot of jobs.
- Dig depth. What is under the existing surface decides how far down we have to go. Old concrete, made ground and soft spots all add to it, and soft ground has to be dug out and made good rather than bridged with an extra bit of stone.
- Drainage. Whether the water can go to a border or a soakaway inside the boundary, or whether it needs a channel drain and a proper connection, is a real cost and it belongs on the quote rather than in a conversation on day three.
- Levels. A frontage or a garden that falls away, or sits above the pavement behind a wall, needs the levels solving first. Retaining, steps and edgings all come before a single block goes down.
- The surface you choose. Block paving, natural stone and tarmac are not the same money, and neither are two ranges of the same material. We will tell you honestly where spending more shows and where it does not.
We do not publish a rate card, because a per metre figure tells you nothing until somebody has seen those five things. That is why the visit comes first and the number comes after.
What we do not claim
We do not display scheme logos or accreditation badges we are not entitled to. What we do have is our insurance and 25 five star reviews on our Google Business Profile, and you can read every one of those.
Where your details go
Your enquiry comes straight to us. We price the job and we do the work, so nothing is passed on to a panel of contractors to bid over, nothing is sold, and you are not added to a marketing list. The detail is in our privacy notice.
Once you have a price, the how a job runs page sets out what happens next, stage by stage.
Get it in writing
Tell us the postcode and roughly what you want doing. We come out, measure up and price it properly.