Tarmac DIY

[Roz]

So we have a shared, unadopted lane leading up to 3 houses. I don’t think anyone owns it. Along with our neighbour we dug up one side of the lane to lay water pipes. The lane is in terrible condition so we are wincing at the idea of spending £4k getting it repaired when the rest of the lane will still be so crap. So we are planning on doing it ourselves. Here’s the plan, any holes?

 

it’s about 60m long. Will average about 1m wide for the section we are doing and I was calculating tarmac for 45mm deep..The side we need to repair is not in good condition, it was just scraped at by a digger so no clean edge. 
 

we will start by cutting a clean edge with a disc cutter along the length. (Neighbour has a 300m one but Need an asphalt blade)
break up what’s left and remove loose stuff (neighbour has a breaker if needed)

fill any deep holes with hardcore / bashed up old tarmac

compact? With compactor (hire for about £40)

Get tarmac delivered next morning (about £700 for 6 tonnes and haulage)

barrow it up and down the lane (or maybe we want a motorised barrow?)

Compact with one of those ride on rollers with water spray to keep the roller clean (hire about £150 plus delivery)

seal join with bitumen seal and a blow torch (about £100)

not planning on a proper curb edge to the non joint side, as it didn’t have one before, and don’t think anyone who quoted us for it was going to make one either.

also considering getting someone in on a day rate just to be a more experienced pair of hands but that would add £200

 

any thoughts / advice /etc ?

 

thanks!!

[Declan52]

Unless you have the hot box delivering it and staying there and filling your barrows by the time you get half way through that pile it will have gone cold and be a real pain to shovel,lay and level. 

Without an edge it will just squash and move out with nothing holding it and crack and then your back to another repair job in a few years.

What about some timber 9*1 and a few pegs to form an edge and fill it with concrete??? The lorry can drive to the end then drive out filling as it goes. 

 

 

[markc]

Got to agree with @Declan52 badly layed tarmac won’t last long and if it’s already cooling then you won’t get it to compact enough to keep water out which freezes and bursts it into pieces.

concrete is your friend here, so much easier to work with

[Roz]

11 minutes ago, Declan52 said:

Unless you have the hot box delivering it and staying there and filling your barrows by the time you get half way through that pile it will have gone cold and be a real pain to shovel,lay and level. 

Without an edge it will just squash and move out with nothing holding it and crack and then your back to another repair job in a few years.

What about some timber 9*1 and a few pegs to form an edge and fill it with concrete??? The lorry can drive to the end then drive out filling as it goes. 

 

 

Thanks Declan! Timber edge definitely worth considering.

 

the lorry is including a 30 minute wait then it’s £48 an hour or so for every hour after that that we ask them to wait. I did wonder about asking them if they could dump it in a line into the trench as it runs along the road!

[Roz]

Just realised you both said concrete and I hadn’t picked that up… is the price comparable? I feel like we ‘should’ respire like with like but I don’t know. 

[Roz]

15 minutes ago, Declan52 said:

Unless you have the hot box delivering it and staying there and filling your barrows by the time you get half way through that pile it will have gone cold and be a real pain to shovel,lay and level. 

Without an edge it will just squash and move out with nothing holding it and crack and then your back to another repair job in a few years.

What about some timber 9*1 and a few pegs to form an edge and fill it with concrete??? The lorry can drive to the end then drive out filling as it goes. 

 

 

The thing is all the country lanes round here don’t seem to have a retaining edge, and the access lane we are repairing doesn’t either, so I guess that’s why we thought we could do it without one for the tarmac. 

[markc]

Concrete and tarmac are both around 2.4t per cube. At 6 tonnes you are getting roughly 2.5cube of tarmac for £700 and for that you should get around 5-6 cube of concrete depending where you are.

concrete would be better layed thicker where tarmac is flexible so less cracking with thinner layers.

[Roz]

 

30 minutes ago, markc said:

Concrete and tarmac are both around 2.4t per cube. At 6 tonnes you are getting roughly 2.5cube of tarmac for £700 and for that you should get around 5-6 cube of concrete depending where you are.

concrete would be better layed thicker where tarmac is flexible so less cracking with thinner layers.

I just rang for  quick price, think it would be about £960 at 10cm thick, but they recommended 15cm which is £1440, so a decent price difference.we’re also laying on a hill.. so not sure how tricky concrete would be for that.

 

have you guys done any tarmac laying? Are there any holes in our plan that you can see, if we did go that route? 

Edited July 4, 2023 by Roz

[Declan52]

You would definitely need to increase the depth no matter what finish you pick. 50mm of concrete on a road won't last very long. That's bare minimum for a footpath. Should be looking at 75mm -100mm if your looking the lane to take lorries etc.

If your going concrete do it in bays. Say 20m long each time. Then if it cracks in the future it's confined to a single bay. 

All you will need is a mini digger or a shovel if your sadistic to scrape it down to depth and 20m of timber and a load of pegs. Then let the lorry driver back in and fill the bay and drive out filling as he goes. 

Or buy more timber and do the lot in one go if you can get help.

[Declan52]

1 hour ago, Roz said:

 

I just rang for  quick price, think it would be about £960 at 10cm thick, but they recommended 15cm which is £1440, so a decent price difference.we’re also laying on a hill.. so not sure how tricky concrete would be for that.

 

have you guys done any tarmac laying? Are there any holes in our plan that you can see, if we did go that route? 

100mm of concrete will hold plenty of weight. 

Unless it's like Everest it won't make any difference. It's not going to be like soup and run down the hill. 

Tarmac laying is a skilled job. You will need plenty of tools like rakes and shovels and barrows if it's hot. Plenty of red diesel on each to stop the tar sticking to them and get it in as fast as your able. If it goes cold your in deep sh1t. 

[markc]

+1

[Great_scot_selfbuild]

@Roz Hi - I'm just looking at some similar repairs to our unadopted lane. How did you get on? Would really appreciate any tips based on how it went/what you learned.

[Roz]

On 12/01/2025 at 13:01, Great_scot_selfbuild said:

@Roz Hi - I'm just looking at some similar repairs to our unadopted lane. How did you get on? Would really appreciate any tips based on how it went/what you learned.

Hey sorry for the delay I don’t seem to get emails. Not sure if this is still helpful but we did go ahead and do it ourselves with tarmac. We cut the edge clean with a large disc cutter, and then scraped out and cleaned out underneath, compacted with a plate compactor. We hired a ride on rotary compactor which has the automatic spraying of water onto it so we didn’t have to worry about it getting dirty, and had about 6 people helping to rake out the tarmac along the 80 metres. We kept the lorry there until we were done to keep the tarmac warmer, paid them for 2 or 3 hours waiting. It would have been good if we’d organised a way to level it as we were doing it by eye and there are a few dips here and there (you can’t really fill the dips once they are cooled a bit, as it starts to break up, so a more efficient levelling system would have been good - we didn’t organise a timber edge or a timber levelling stick). However, over a year later and it’s still good and not broken up (we were told by one person who quoted to do the repair that it wouldn’t last more than a year, so that was our benchmark for success). The bit we have repaired is in much better condition than the rest of the lane, so it feels generally like it went well. Maybe we wouldn’t have been pleased if we’d paid a professional, but we didn’t! 

 

Clean up of tools was a drag, so would consider the tools as part of the cost of the job so you don’t feel you have to salvage everything. 

 

We were hoping the guy in the tarmac lorry would be able to direct the tarmac into our trench but he couldnt, so we did have to barrow it. With the number of people we had, that wasn’t so bad. A few people barrowing and the rest raking or compacting! 

 

We just did one tarmac type, not two layers with a fine layer on top. Our lane in general wasn’t in good enough condition to warrant that.

 

I can’t remember all the reasons we didn’t go for concrete - but one main one was having to prevent access for longer. 

 

Edited March 3 by Roz