A new driveway is one of the few home improvements that produces more material going out than coming in, and it surprises people every time. Driveway waste in Longton typically arrives in three distinct loads spread across the job rather than one heap at the end, and understanding that pattern is what keeps a drive from being buried under its own spoil halfway through. Whether you are doing the work yourself or having a contractor in, planning the Longton skip hire around the sequence rather than around the finish date will save both money and standing around.
The three stages of driveway waste in Longton
The first stage is the existing surface. Whatever is coming up, whether that is old concrete, cracked tarmac, worn flags or a gravel bed that has spread itself across the front garden over twenty years, it comes out first and it is dense. Broken concrete in particular is the heaviest material most householders will ever put in a skip, and a small volume of it reaches the weight limit long before the skip looks anywhere near full.
The second stage is the dig. A driveway that is going to carry a car needs a proper depth of excavation to take the sub base, and that means subsoil coming out. Around Longton and across the mosslands that subsoil is frequently heavy clay, which holds water, weighs a great deal more than the topsoil above it and does not break down into neat barrow loads. This is the stage that produces by far the greatest tonnage, and it is the one people underestimate most.
The third stage is the tidy up. Offcuts of block paving and kerb, broken slabs, empty bags, membrane, timber shuttering, edging that was cut wrong, and whatever came out of the borders either side. It is lighter and bulkier than the first two and it arrives once the drive itself is essentially finished.
The dropped kerb and why it belongs in the plan
If your new drive needs vehicle access across the footway that is a separate matter from the driveway itself, and it is not something a homeowner or a general builder can simply do. Work on the highway has to be carried out under the highway authority, which for this area is Lancashire County Council, and it has to be done by an approved contractor working to their specification. The application goes in before the drive is built rather than after, because the whole scheme has to be approved including drainage and how surface water will be dealt with.
The kerb work produces its own material, and the contractor doing it will normally deal with that side. What lands back on you is everything inside your boundary. Get the approval position settled early, because a finished driveway with no legal way to drive onto it is an expensive kind of stuck.
How to phase the skips
The temptation is to have one large skip for the duration. It rarely works out cheaper. Because the first two stages are dense and the third is bulky, they load in completely different ways, and mixing them means either a skip that hits its weight limit with the volume half used or one that is full of light material with no room for the rubble.
What we normally suggest is an 8 tonne builders skip for the breakout and the dig, exchanged if the excavation is deep, then a 4 tonne midi skip for the finishing waste at the end. Keeping soil and rubble in a dedicated load rather than mixing it through with membrane and packaging also means the hardcore is recoverable when it reaches us instead of being contaminated by everything else in there.
If you are regrading the lawn or the borders once the drive is in, order the screened top soil for delivery on the day the last skip goes, so you are not working around both at once on a front garden that has already lost most of its space.
Where the skip goes while the drive is a hole
This is the awkward part of a driveway job, because the obvious place to put a skip is the driveway you are currently digging up. In practice the skip usually has to stand on the road for at least part of the work, which needs a permit from Lancashire County Council as highway authority under the Highways Act 1980, currently thirty six pounds per month. Our guide to whether you need a permit to place a skip on the road in Lancashire explains the conditions attached to it. We apply on your behalf, but allow a few working days rather than assuming it happens overnight.
What we do with the material
Concrete, brick, block and clean hardcore are among the most usefully recoverable things a domestic customer sends us. It all comes back to our own recycling centre where it is processed rather than buried, which is a large part of why keeping those loads clean is worth the small effort it takes.
Driveway work across the area
Front garden and driveway projects run in a season, and we deliver into the same weeks for households arranging Penwortham skip hire and for the properties covered by Tarleton skip hire. Late summer is the busiest stretch of the year for this work, so exchange slots book up.
Tell us the area of the drive and the depth being dug and we will tell you what to expect in tonnes rather than guesses. Ring the team on 01772 364399 or send us the details of your driveway project and we will put a plan together for the whole job.
