How to price a driveway or paving job (landscaper)

The sub-base is sized for load, not for area

The costliest mistake is pricing a driveway as if it were a patio. The sub-base must be sized for the load the paving has to carry. For a footpath or patio you typically reckon around 15 cm of crushed aggregate. For a driveway with vehicle traffic you need to be at around 25-35 cm depending on how soft the subgrade is and whether heavy vehicles will use it (a van, say, or a trailer full of gravel).

The aggregate is laid and compacted in layers. A single thick layer cannot be compacted properly all the way down, and the result is settlement half a year after handover. Reckon on layers of no more than 10-15 cm, each rolled or plate-compacted. On top of the sub-base comes a bedding layer, typically 3-5 cm of grit or bedding sand, which the pavers are set directly into.

Pavers per m2, plus waste

Paving is reckoned per m2, but never order exactly the measured area. Cuts along edges, at gullies and around curves create waste, and you do not want to end up 12 pavers short from a batch that is no longer available in the same shade. Add around 5% waste on top of the measured area. With many cuts (curved edges, diagonal patterns) you can reasonably reckon 7-10%.

Price the laying itself as a separate line. Straight laying in stretcher bond is fast; patterns, curves and lots of cuts cost markedly more hours per m2. This is where two quotes for the same driveway can differ by thousands without anyone having miscalculated.

Fall to the drain is not negotiable

Water must move away from the building. Reckon on a minimum fall of 25 per mille, that is 2.5%, away from the house wall and towards a drain, channel or permeable bed. That is 2.5 cm per metre. Forget the fall in planning and you only discover it once you are laying pavers, and then the whole bedding layer has to be re-graded. Build the fall in already at the sub-base stage.

Plan the drainage from the start as its own line: a channel drain, a point drain with a silt trap, or a connection to an existing gully. Without a plan for where the water ends up, the quote is not finished.

Edge restraint holds it all together

Paving without edge restraint migrates. At every free edge (against the lawn, a bed, or wherever there is no wall to push back) the pavers must be locked in. The standard is an edging set in concrete, a semi-dry concrete haunch that fixes the edging in place. Skip it and the outer rows creep within a couple of seasons, and the joints open up from the inside.

Reckon edge restraint as linear metres along the free edges, including edging, concrete and labour. It is a small line per metre, but on a large driveway it adds up, and it is not optional.

Excavation and soil disposal is the big, overlooked line

This is where the hidden money is. If you are building up 30 cm of sub-base plus bedding and pavers, you first have to dig out the same depth. All that soil has to be handled. Reckon the excavation in m3 (area times dig depth), and remember that soil bulks up once dug out, so a load of soil takes more space on the truck than it did in the hole.

Haulage and tipping cost both transport and a gate fee, and the price depends on whether the soil is clean or contaminated. On an urban site this single line can be larger than all the pavers combined. Underestimate it and it eats the entire margin.

And before you ever put a spade in the ground: run a utility search. It is a legal requirement to obtain information on buried services before digging. Cutting through a fibre or gas line is both dangerous and expensive, and the liability is yours.

The rainwater needs somewhere to go (SuDS)

More and more councils require local management of rainwater (SuDS), and a sealed paved surface sends all the water straight into the sewer. Consider permeable joints, a soakaway or a rain garden as part of the solution, and price it if the customer or the council demands it. It is both a selling point and a line that must not hide inside a round per-m2 price.

What an honest breakdown looks like

A driveway quote should show the work in its real parts, so the customer can see what they are paying for and you do not lose a line along the way:

• Excavation and soil disposal (m3, transport and tipping)
• Sub-base: crushed aggregate sized for load, compacted in layers (m3 or tonnes)
• Bedding layer
• Edge restraint in concrete at free edges (linear metres)
• Pavers per m2 plus around 5% waste
• Laying (depends on pattern and cuts)
• Drainage and fall to the drain
• Any SuDS solution
• Utility search before digging

You source the materials from suppliers like Stark, XL-BYG or IBF, and their prices shift. It is hard to keep on top of by hand: you measure an area, but you need pavers, cubic metres of aggregate, tonnes for compaction and cubic metres of soil for disposal, each with its own waste and its own unit.

Let the maths run itself

Calco takes the area and the fall and converts it into what you actually have to order: number of pavers including waste, m3 and tonnes of aggregate for the sub-base, and m3 of soil to haul away, with edge restraint as linear metres on top. The price is built up in the right lines, so sub-base, edging and disposal never vanish into a round square-metre price. You spend your time building the driveway, not calculating it. See how it works for landscapers at /tilbud-anlaegsgartner.