Looking for Driveway alternatives

[bski224]

Looking for a non asphalt or cement driveway. Building garage in backyard and she dosent want to look at dway all the way to back, Any solutions other than getting rid of wife!! maybe some stone ideas?? Pics would be great

 

[danfromsyr]

I have not used it yet, but this spring I intend to use POLYPAVEMENT to create the additional "off turf" parking and storage areas around my garage.
Tired of Mud, and Grass between my parked projects.

http://www.polypavement.com/more_info.php


take a jump down to the Strength & base/subgrade sections.
http://www.polypavement.com/more_info.php#strength

from my loose figures the 5gal "trial size" will suit a large part of my planned new 'asphalt'

a rototiller and some manual labor and it's 3-5xs stronger than asphalt.
and at my own pace.. no need to call in a crew

 

[caper150]

That sounds like pretty interisting stuff

 

[BFHgarage]

As a landscape architect who has been lurking on this forum for a while, I thought I would chime in on this one. If the area between your existing driveway and the new garage is capable of supporting grass (sunlight?), you could do reinforced turf. Here is one of several manufacturers: http://www.invisiblestructures.com/grasspave2.html
It will look like lawn, but be capable of supporting heavy vehicular loads.

 

[larry_g]

As a landscape architect who has been lurking on this forum for a while, I thought I would chime in on this one. If the area between your existing driveway and the new garage is capable of supporting grass (sunlight?), you could do reinforced turf. Here is one of several manufacturers: http://www.invisiblestructures.com/grasspave2.html
It will look like lawn, but be capable of supporting heavy vehicular loads.

Neat stuff that plastic that they use for fire lanes and such. I would be a bit wary of it for daily use. I just had a paver guy out today to bid on a patio and in his picture book he showed some fantastic driveways that he had done in paver stone/blocks. Is it possible to have two paved tracks with a grassy area in between? I had an uncle that had two ribbons of concrete to drive on back to his garage in the backyard.

lg
no neat sig line

 

[bski224]

Grass pavers look awesome, Im tryin to find prices. They say an "affordable solution" cant find prices anywhere. Id do 2 strips down my backyard !!

 

[Stephenw]

How about an old timey ribbon driveway.

 

[Jason641]

In addition to the plastic product that was shown in another post, there are also a number of concrete paver products that allow grass to grow. One example is: http://www.soilretention.com/drivablegrass.html

 

[NUTTSGT]

If you find a dealer to some of the products above, try to see if you can go look at some of their finished work. This way your wife can see if she likes it or not. She may find that she would rather have a concrete driveway after looking at the options.

 

[kbs2244]

I saw these in front of a up scale suburb fire station.

http://www.belgard.biz/shapes-turfstone.htm

 

[stankp]

We ran into a similar deal. Our lot is quite narrow and we do not have alley access so our drive had to be about 50% of our yard. We poured 4'x4' concrete pads about 5" apart and laid sod in the voids. Gives you a little of both worlds, I suppose you could increase the spacing if need be or reduce the size of the pads....

 

[bill9860]

Well, it is covered by snow now so no pics but I had a detached garage built this past summer and the apron from the garage to the existing driveway is Pennsylvania flagstone. It goes around to the side door as well and forms a sidewalk to the rear of the house. Pricey but looks great and it is about the only thing my wife likes about the whole porject. Glad I thought of it.

 

[dlenkewich]

We ran into a similar deal. Our lot is quite narrow and we do not have alley access so our drive had to be about 50% of our yard. We poured 4'x4' concrete pads about 5" apart and laid sod in the voids. Gives you a little of both worlds, I suppose you could increase the spacing if need be or reduce the size of the pads....

Awesome idea. That looks really great.

 

[stankp]

Thanks. Again we wanted something we could drive on but was "soft" looking. It is a bit tough to shovel in the winter but I just set the snow-thrower up a bit and it skips over the sod bits..

 

[nmanitou]

I saw these in front of a up scale suburb fire station.

http://www.belgard.biz/shapes-turfstone.htm

+1 on this type of product. My company has used it on commercial projects for overflow parking applications. I think they have different thicknesses and bedding requirements for specific loading and soil type, so check with the vendor.

 

[Zick]

We ran into a similar deal. Our lot is quite narrow and we do not have alley access so our drive had to be about 50% of our yard. We poured 4'x4' concrete pads about 5" apart and laid sod in the voids. Gives you a little of both worlds, I suppose you could increase the spacing if need be or reduce the size of the pads....

That stone wall is sweet!

 

[stankp]

Thanks. We built that a couple years ago. We like the aesthetic of gabion baskets so this is our thin, vertical, non-retaining version of that. We used 4" "W" shapes with 2"x2" welded wire on both sides then simply filled with rock. The whole fence has a total of about 5 tons of granite in it...

 

[volksraj]

That stone wall is sweet!

X2!!!

 

[78Bird]

I havent checked the links, but I saw on Planet Green a guy did the reinforced turf, it was a high strength plastic grid that you backfill with dirt and then plant grass. It supports the weight keeping you from compressing the soil and killing the grass... but it looks (and is cared for)like perfectly normal lawn.

Sweet, IMO, it lets you have a driveway without the uglyness, and more grass keeps the place cooler too.

Edit: pretty much what BFH posted. once it grows back in, it looks just like yard. Cant complain about that.