The paving is finished and the car is still on the road
The front garden went three weeks ago. Turf and privet out, forty square metres of block paving in, soldier course round the perimeter, a strip of shingle against the bay window, and a final invoice settled. Then a letter arrives from the council, or a neighbour says something over the fence, and the owner learns that the only route from the carriageway onto their new drive crosses about two metres of ground that has never belonged to them and never will. Nothing they have paid for is defective. It is simply stranded.
The footway in front of a terrace or a semi is highway. Its surface is vested in the highway authority, in almost every residential street it is maintainable at public expense, and the kerb separating it from the carriageway changes nothing about who owns it. Driving a vehicle across a footway is an offence in its own right under section 72 of the Highways Act 1835 — still the provision reached for when somebody mounts a pavement — and doing it daily damages a construction never designed for wheel loads. The kerb rocks in its bed, the flags behind it follow, the joint opens, and water gets under the lot at the authority's expense until it decides to pursue the owner for it.
The lawful route across is a vehicle crossing constructed under section 184 of the Highways Act 1980, and that section is worth understanding properly because it runs in both directions. It is the mechanism by which an owner asks for a crossing to be made over a footway or verge. It is also the mechanism by which an authority which has noticed that vehicles are habitually being driven over a footway with no crossing may serve notice requiring one to be constructed, and recover what the work cost. A homeowner who bumps the kerb for two years and then receives an invoice has not been treated arbitrarily. They have been treated exactly as the section provides for.
So the job splits along a line the owner cannot see and frequently cannot locate. On their side of the highway boundary they may build what they like, subject to planning. On the far side they may not lift a flag without written permission, and the specification is not theirs to write. Everything below works outwards from that line: what has to be true on the private side before an application is worth submitting, who may work on the public side, what gets built there, and how two surfaces owned by different people are made to meet without a step, a puddle or a scrape.
The rectangle the application is really about
The first question the authority asks has nothing to do with the paving. It is whether a car, once across the footway, can stand entirely on private ground with no part of it overhanging the highway. A crossing delivering a vehicle onto a frontage too shallow to hold it relocates the obstruction from the carriageway to the pavement, and the application is refused on that alone however good the block work is. So measure that depth from the highway boundary, and expect the highway boundary not to be the garden wall. Footways were frequently laid with a margin behind them, and on estate roads the adopted extent can sit a metre or more inside what everyone treats as the front garden. The definitive answer is the authority's adopted highway record, a public document the crossing team will consult anyway; a Land Registry title plan is not the same thing and has caused more wasted surveys on this job than anything else. Find the true line first, then measure back to the nearest thing a car cannot pass — a bay window, a garage door, a meter box, a step, a bin store, or a gate that opens outwards. A gate swinging across the footway fails on its own account, whatever the depth behind it.
The depth figure itself belongs to the authority and differs between adjoining boroughs, so it is asked for rather than assumed. What is worth knowing is where such figures come from: Manual for Streets works from a typical car parking bay of 4.8 m by 2.4 m (about 15 ft 9 in by 7 ft 10 in), and most crossing specifications are built up from a bay dimension of that kind plus a clearance behind the back of footway. Longer vehicles, and any frontage where the owner intends to park two cars nose to tail, need checking against the actual vehicle rather than the standard bay.
Width matters at both ends, for different reasons. At the kerb the authority sets a maximum, because a long run of dropped kerb removes on-street parking and weakens the footway. At the boundary the paved area has to be at least as wide as the crossing it serves, or the first wheel off the crossing lands on lawn. The sting for a homeowner who has already paved is neither of those; it is the build-up. A front garden laid as a patio has a sub-base sized for people, and a driveway carrying a car needs the vehicular depth — a different excavation, not a different surface. Rerunning the frontage as a light vehicular area, before the application goes in, is what turns the conversation into a realistic price.
Set the usable rectangle — the depth you measured back from the true highway boundary, by the width the crossing will serve — and switch the traffic setting to light vehicular, because the sub-base depth that comes back is the number that decides whether the existing paving stays or comes up.
SettingsSettings for this calculation
The standard allowance most suppliers and estimating guides assume for ordinary work.
Length of the paved area.
Width of the paved area.
What will use the surface.
Screeded sand layer under the units.
Allowance for cuts and breakage.
Paving area
279 ft²
Sub-base includes a 25% compaction allowance. Depths follow common guidance and should give way to a specific specification where one exists.
- Net paved area
- 253.5 ft²
- Sub-base depth
- 3.94 in
- Sub-base to order (loose)
- 3.85 yd³
- Sub-base weight
- 10,384.18 lb
- Bedding sand
- 0.98 yd³
- Area in ft²
- 278.85 ft²
They open the calculator with your figures already in it
Hardscape Area & Base Calculator: 279 ft² — shown in imperial, US market. The link sets both, so the result they see is the one on your screen.
Estimated cost — your price
This site holds no price list for this material — local prices vary too much to publish honestly. Enter your supplier's price and the result is costed with it.
What this calculation does not cover
- Assumes a competent subgrade. Soft or clay ground needs excavation to a firm formation and usually a geotextile separator, neither of which is calculated here.
- No allowance for edge restraint, which paving needs on every free edge or it spreads.
Who is allowed to cut the kerb
Nobody builds a vehicle crossing on their own initiative, and the route to being allowed to differs by authority. Some carry out all crossing works themselves through their term maintenance contractor and quote the owner a price; others license a list of approved contractors and inspect the finished work; a few will consider anyone holding the right accreditation and insurance. Settle that first, because it decides whether you are quoting for the whole job or only for the private side of the boundary.
Planning permission is a separate consent from the crossing approval, and it catches people out twice. The General Permitted Development Order's class covering the formation of a means of access to a highway does not extend to accesses onto a trunk road or a classified road, so a frontage on an A, B or C road needs a planning application as well as the highway authority's approval. The second trap is the paving itself: the Order's class covering hard surfaces within the curtilage of a dwellinghouse is conditional, and hard surfacing between the house and the highway above a threshold area is permitted development only where the surface is porous or the runoff is directed to a permeable area inside the boundary. The Department for Communities and Local Government's Guidance on the Permeable Surfacing of Front Gardens explains that condition, and a homeowner who has just laid impermeable blocks straight to a gully may already be in breach before the crossing is discussed at all. Conservation areas, listed buildings and Article 4 directions each remove permitted development rights independently.
Then there is being fit to work in the street at all. Street works in England and Wales sit under the New Roads and Street Works Act 1991, which frames both the licensing of the works and the qualifications the operatives and supervisor must hold. Signing, lighting and guarding is not improvised: Safety at Street Works and Road Works: A Code of Practice — the Red Book — sets out what a footway closure and a pedestrian diversion look like, and Chapter 8 of the Traffic Signs Manual covers traffic management where the works reach the carriageway. Materials standing in the highway need a licence under the Highways Act 1980, and a skip on the road needs a permit under the same Act — a separate application with its own lighting and marking conditions.
Elsewhere the machinery differs while the logic does not. Scottish consent sits with the roads authority under the Roads (Scotland) Act 1984; in Northern Ireland the roads function is centralised in the Department for Infrastructure. In the United States and Canada the same job is a driveway approach or curb cut permit from the municipality's public works department, with geometry from AASHTO's A Policy on Geometric Design of Highways and Streets and the sidewalk crossing governed by the Public Right-of-Way Accessibility Guidelines — which is why an American apron is detailed to hold the pedestrian route's cross slope across the driveway rather than tipping it toward the gutter.
- Establish the adopted highway extent from the authority's record before measuring anything.
- Confirm whether the road is classified, and whether a planning application runs alongside.
- Get the current standard construction drawing and the maximum crossing width in writing.
- Photograph the frontage, the footway both ways, and the channel line before submitting.
- Agree where the drive's surface water goes at application stage, not at inspection.
- Price the private side last: a refusal voids the quotation and a condition usually changes it.
| Frontage | Consent that permits the crossing | Who may work in the highway |
|---|---|---|
| Unclassified road, England and Wales | Vehicle crossing approval under Highways Act 1980 s.184 | The authority's own contractor, or a contractor it approves and inspects |
| Classified road, England and Wales | Planning permission in addition to the s.184 approval | As above, with the highway authority consulted on the planning application |
| Trunk road | Planning permission and the national highway body's approval | Contractors working to that body's own specification and permit regime |
| Scotland | Roads authority consent under the Roads (Scotland) Act 1984 | The roads authority or a contractor it accepts |
| United States and Canada | Municipal driveway approach or curb cut permit | Licensed and bonded contractor named on the permit |
Two metres of footway with everything in it
The strip between kerb and boundary is the most congested ground on a residential street. Water, gas, electricity, telecoms and street lighting all run parallel to the kerb at roughly the depth a crossing wants, and the covers are the visible fraction of it: stop tap, gas cover, telecoms chamber, lighting column base, the gully at the low point. Ironwork left in a wheel track will crack, and paving over it is not the answer. Apparatus is altered or raised by the undertaker that owns it, on its own timescale, and the diversion is charged to whoever needs it moved — a lead time of weeks and a cost that can exceed the crossing, which is why services are established before a price is given.
The other refusals arrive from things above ground and are usually final. A highway tree in the line of the crossing outranks a driveway; so does a tree with a preservation order, and root protection extends well past the visible canopy. Bus stops and their clearways, controlled parking bays, cycle lanes, the tapers of a pedestrian crossing, guard rail, and the corner radius at a junction all block a crossing outright or push it sideways along the frontage to a position the owner may not want. Sight lines are the last of them, and the most negotiable: what a driver reversing out can see along the carriageway is assessed against the authority's standard, informed by the stopping distance guidance in Manual for Streets, and a hedge or a wall the owner is fond of is sometimes the whole of the objection.
Digging out to formation, on somebody else's ground
The crossing is a small pavement with an unhelpful load case: slow, turning, repeated wheel loads on a construction a couple of metres long, with one edge unsupported at the channel. It is excavated to the authority's construction depth, which is deeper than a footway and often deeper than the driveway behind it, and that depth comes off their standard drawing rather than from what is already in the ground. Where the private drive was built shallow, the two build-ups meet at the boundary as a step in the formation, bridged by carrying the deeper construction back onto the private side rather than tapering the sub-base out to nothing. Most authorities inspect the formation before it is covered, so it is worth having it right rather than having it ready. Proof-roll the bottom, dig out soft spots rather than compacting over them, and treat one that pumps water as a reason to stop and ask — a formation sitting over an old service trench or a filled cellar light is common on Victorian frontages. Separation geotextile over fine-grained or wet subgrade earns its cost here more than almost anywhere, because a crossing that loses base thickness into the subgrade reports it as a dip at the channel, where every wheel passes.
The sub-base is an unbound granular material, typically the Type 1 unbound mixture described in the Specification for Highway Works, Series 800, laid and compacted in lifts the plant on site can actually densify. On a job this size the plant is a twin-drum roller or a heavy plate in a two-metre-wide hole, which limits lift thickness more than any specification does. Compact in both directions with full overlap and keep the material at a workable moisture content; dry Type 1 will not lock and saturated Type 1 will pump under the plate.
Quantities behave differently on a footway than on the drive behind it. Aggregate is sold by mass and specified by compacted depth, so the order runs through a compacted density and the loose material delivered occupies noticeably more space than the layer it becomes. More to the point, there is nowhere to put it: a crossing has no stockpile area that is not the highway or the owner's new paving, so material arrives close to the day it is laid and spoil goes straight into a grab lorry. Getting the tonnage right is about avoiding a second delivery inside a licensed, timed closure, not about avoiding a small overspend.
A footway crossing in section, channel to boundary
- Block surface — the wearing course across the crossing, in units thick enough for vehicles rather than the thinner pedestrian unit used on the footway either side Paver Calculator
- Laying course — a thin screeded bedding layer at one consistent thickness, which seats the units and is never used to make up a base that came in low Hardscape Area & Base Calculator
- Dropped kerb units — the dropper run plus a transition unit each side, set to the exposure above channel that the authority's standard drawing fixes — bought as units by the metre, which is the one layer here nothing on this site counts for you
- Concrete bed and haunch — the bed the kerb sits on and the wedge behind it, which together stop the unit rotating outward under a turning wheel; quantified as one cross-section carried along the run Concrete Curb and Gutter Volume Calculator
- Compacted sub-base — unbound granular material in lifts the plant can reach through, taken to the authority's construction depth rather than the footway's Gravel Base Layer Tonnage Calculator
- Formation — the inspected bottom of the excavation, proof-rolled and with soft spots dug out rather than compacted over
Put the crossing area and the authority's compacted depth through a compacted density to get the delivered tonnage, and order it against the day of the closure rather than the week, because there is no lawful place to stockpile it.
The total area to be covered with gravel base.
The target compacted thickness of the base layer.
The in-place density of the base once it is compacted.
Gravel base needed
73.8 tons
Actual density varies by material gradation and compaction — confirm with your supplier's specific product density for a precise order quantity.
- Volume
- 39.81 yd³
- Equivalent in US (short) tons
- 73.82 tons
They open the calculator with your figures already in it
Gravel Base Layer Tonnage Calculator: 73.82 tons — shown in imperial, US market. The link sets both, so the result they see is the one on your screen.
Estimated cost — your price
This site holds no price list for this material — local prices vary too much to publish honestly. Enter your supplier's price and the result is costed with it.
What this calculation does not cover
- This is a take-off, not a pavement design. It multiplies out whatever compacted thickness you enter; nothing here derives that depth from traffic loading, subgrade strength, drainage or frost depth, which come from a pavement design or your local road authority's standard.
- Geometry is a flat plan area at one uniform depth. Crown and cross-fall, a formation that steps between thicknesses, a dig that deepens where the subgrade was soft, and edge thickening or haunching at the perimeter all fall outside area x thickness.
- No waste, spillage or subgrade-loss allowance is applied. The figure is the exact in-place mass, so stone lost into a soft or uneven formation, over-excavation, haul and spread losses, and the tail end of a part-load all sit on top of it.
- The density field is an in-place compacted density. A supplier's loose bulk density and a weighbridge ticket carrying free moisture are different quantities, and substituting either moves the tonnage: the wetter the delivered material, the less dry stone a given delivered weight puts on the ground.
- It covers one layer of one material. A base and sub-base of different gradations, a bedding or blinding course, and the geotextile or separation membrane between stone and subgrade are not counted here.
The kerb line, which is the only part that is genuinely irreversible
A dropped kerb is a set of units, not a single product. The crossing runs in dropper units and at each end a transition unit brings the line back up to full height over a short length, so the count is always droppers plus two tapers and the run at the channel is longer than the crossing width the owner asked for. Precast concrete kerb units are manufactured to BS EN 1340, and the authority's drawing names the profile, the radius units at any splay, and the exposure the finished kerb face stands above the channel. That exposure is not a matter of taste: too high and the underside of a low car catches it, too low and the channel loses containment and water crosses the footway instead of running along it.
The channel line is not yours to move. Carriageway water runs along it to a gully on a gradient designed decades before the driveway. Lift, dish or interrupt that line and the crossing ponds against the kerb face at its low end, and in freezing weather that puddle is why the kerb starts moving. Set the units off the existing channel with a string taken well beyond both transition units, not off the two kerbs either side.
Kerbs are bedded on concrete and haunched behind, and the haunch does the structural work. A kerb resists the sideways thrust of a wheel climbing it by bearing against the concrete behind its back face; a unit bedded but not haunched will rotate. Bed thickness, haunch dimensions and concrete class come from the authority's specification, written against the designated concretes of BS 8500-1 and, for the works generally, the kerbs and footways provisions in Series 1100 of the Specification for Highway Works. Quantify it as it is built: a constant cross-section carried along a run, with tapers and radius units measured separately because their geometry is not that constant section.
Take the bed and haunch dimensions off the authority's standard detail and run them against the full kerb length including both transition units, since the tapers are the part every quotation leaves out.
The total length of the curb-and-gutter run.
The vertical height of the curb face above the gutter.
The thickness of the curb section itself.
The full width of the gutter pan, measured from the BACK of the curb across the pan — not from the curb face.
The thickness of the gutter pan slab.
Curb and gutter concrete volume
7.639 yd³
- Combined cross-sectional area
- 1.25 ft²
They open the calculator with your figures already in it
Concrete Curb and Gutter Volume Calculator: 7.64 yd³ — shown in imperial, US market. The link sets both, so the result they see is the one on your screen.
Estimated cost — your price
This site holds no price list for this material — local prices vary too much to publish honestly. Enter your supplier's price and the result is costed with it.
What this calculation does not cover
- Carries no allowance for what the ground takes. The section is placed on a trimmed subgrade, and over-excavation, a soft spot, or a trimmed line running 10 mm (0.39 in) low along the whole job all add concrete that no theoretical cross-section contains. Ordering the calculated volume for a continuous pour is how a run comes up short, and a short load part-way along a curb line leaves a cold joint that stays visible.
- The concrete only. The compacted granular base under the section, the tie bars or dowels at construction joints, and the filler at expansion joints are all taken off this same run length and are the items most often left off the order — the base course alone is often as large a volume as the concrete sitting on it.
Concrete where the specification asks for it
Whether the crossing surface is concrete or blocks is the authority's decision, not the owner's, and the two are different jobs. A concrete crossing is a small slab with a hostile environment: it is opened to traffic sooner than anyone would like, it has an unsupported edge at the kerb, and it is cast in a hole with a pedestrian route running past it. Where it is specified, joints go where the drawing says and the arris at the kerb is formed properly rather than trowelled, because that edge is what a tyre climbs first.
The pour is awkward for reasons that have nothing to do with the concrete. Two metres by three is a fraction of a cubic metre — a quantity a ready-mix plant delivers only against a minimum charge, and one that is genuinely faster mixed on site from bagged material where access is bad and the barrow run short. Which is cheaper flips at a volume worth calculating rather than guessing, and the sum has to carry the part load charge, not just the rate. Delivery of ready-mixed concrete is governed by BS EN 206 with BS 8500 in the United Kingdom and by ASTM C94 in North America, and the two do not constrain it the same way: ASTM C94 caps elapsed time and drum revolutions before discharge, while BS 8500 dropped its prescriptive time-in-transit limit at the 2023 revision, which leaves the workable life of the mix as something agreed with the supplier rather than read off a standard. Either way the load has a life, the closure has a window, and a pour inside a permitted closure is planned around whichever runs out first.
Curing and opening to traffic are what a small crossover pour gets wrong most often, because the pressure to reopen the footway is immediate and the concrete does not care. Keep the surface damp or covered for the period the specification requires, and keep vehicles off until the authority's criterion is met rather than until it looks hard. Reinstating the adjacent footway is part of the same works and is inspected as such; most approvals carry a guarantee period during which a cracked bay beside the crossing is the contractor's problem.
Take the crossing area and the specified thickness, then read the volume and the bag count side by side — a strip this small is the case where mixing on site can genuinely beat a part load, and this is where that comparison gets made.
SettingsSettings for this calculation
The standard allowance most suppliers and estimating guides assume for ordinary work.
The length of the slab or footing.
The width of the slab or footing.
How deep the concrete pour is.
Extra concrete for spillage, uneven subgrade, and forming imprecision.
Estimated concrete needed
1.358 cubic yards
- Volume (no waste)
- 1.23 yd³
- Volume with waste factor
- 1.36 yd³
- Cubic feet
- 36.67 ft³
- 80 lb bags needed
- 62 bags
They open the calculator with your figures already in it
Concrete Calculator: 1.36 cubic yards — shown in imperial, US market. The link sets both, so the result they see is the one on your screen.
Estimated cost — your price
This site holds no price list for this material — local prices vary too much to publish honestly. Enter your supplier's price and the result is costed with it.
What this calculation does not cover
- Geometry is one rectangular prism: length x width x a single uniform thickness. Thickened edges, integral footings, haunches, steps, curbs and any non-rectangular outline are not in the figure, and nothing is subtracted for block-outs or openings. Take those off as separate volumes and add them.
- It assumes a flat, compacted subgrade sitting at exactly the depth you entered. Ruts, soft spots, over-excavation and a base that dishes in the middle all take concrete the geometry never sees, and a flat waste percentage is not a measurement of that. On a rough base, check depth across the whole pour rather than trusting the allowance.
- This is a volume take-off, not a structural decision. It accepts whatever thickness you type without sizing it, and says nothing about mix strength, aggregate size, air entrainment, fibre, or rebar and mesh. Slabs carrying vehicles, footings, and anything supporting a structure are a code and engineering question.
- The bag count assumes an 80 lb (36 kg) bag yields about 0.6 cubic feet (17 litres) of mixed concrete, and rounds up to whole bags. Real yield shifts with the product and with how much water goes in, and no other bag size is converted for you.
- The volume is not an order quantity. Ready-mix is sold in fixed increments with a minimum load and its own short-load charges, and concrete left in the drum, the chute or the pump line is not counted. The waste factor covers spillage and forming slop, not the plant's ordering rules.
Code thresholds this tool can check
Code thresholds this tool can check
Checked for United States. Each check below names the body that published the limit it uses. Switching market re-runs them. This is not a code review and has no official standing.
These checks cover only the specific numeric limits listed below. They are not a complete code review: fire separation, egress, structural capacity and accessibility provisions are outside their scope, and only the handful of local amendments offered in the selector are modelled — your municipality may have others. Passing every check here does not make a design compliant. Final approval rests with your local building authority.
WITHIN LIMIT — Concrete floor slabs on ground: minimum 3.5 in (89 mm) thick.
Slab thickness 4.00 in meets the 3.5 in IRC floor-slab minimum. Expansive soils are handled separately under IRC R403.1.8, and any slab carrying vehicles or point loads should be designed rather than taken from the code minimum.
ICC · IRC R506.1
Making the drive meet a level somebody else set
The crossing's profile is fixed. It runs from the exposure at the channel to whatever level the authority's drawing puts at the back of footway, and along the way it has to keep the footway walkable for people crossing it, which is why the crossfall across a crossing is controlled and why an apron that simply tips everything toward the gutter fails on accessibility rather than on construction. In the United Kingdom the pedestrian side of that is the territory of the Department for Transport's Inclusive Mobility; in the United States it is the Public Right-of-Way Accessibility Guidelines. Either way, every level in that two-metre strip is somebody else's, and the entire job of absorbing the difference falls on the private side of the boundary.
Front gardens sitting above the road are where this becomes real. If the finished drive is 300 mm (about 12 in) above the back of footway, the crossing cannot climb it — the change of gradient at the boundary is what grounds a car, and long or low vehicles catch on a break-over angle that a short steep ramp produces even when neither gradient alone is severe. The honest fixes are all private-side: excavate and retain to lower the drive, lengthen the transition by spending more of the frontage depth, or accept that this frontage does not take a crossing. Walk the proposed profile with a straightedge and a taut line before anyone commits.
Water is the other level problem, and a condition of most approvals. Surface water from a private drive must not discharge onto the highway, so the fall at the boundary runs the wrong way from what gravity suggests and is dealt with by a channel drain, a permeable margin, or a fall back into the garden. That sits alongside the permeable surfacing condition already discussed; in England and Wales the drainage of paved areas around a dwelling falls under Approved Document H. A linear channel at the boundary is the usual answer, and it needs somewhere to go — a soakaway sized for the ground, not a tee into a foul connection.
Then the paving comes up. Almost every crossing installed behind existing block paving needs the first course or two on the private side lifted and relaid, because the boundary level has moved and because the crossing has to tie into something rather than butt against a soldier course sitting on bedding sand. Warn the owner before the first paver is lifted, and warn them about colour: blocks bought a season ago will not match a pack from a different production run, so the units lifted at the boundary are the ones that go back there and any new material is worked in where it reads as a deliberate change. Where the whole frontage is coming up to the vehicular build-up anyway, count the area in one go and buy from one run.
Count the units for whatever area is genuinely being relaid — the boundary courses at minimum, the whole frontage if the build-up is being corrected — and buy the lot from one production run, because the alternative is a visible colour break across the busiest part of the drive.
SettingsSettings for this calculation
The standard allowance most suppliers and estimating guides assume for ordinary work.
The length of the area to be paved.
The width of the area to be paved.
Any part of the rectangle that is not paved — a pool, a planting bed, a tree pit. Leave it at 0 for a plain rectangle.
The length of a single paver.
The width of a single paver.
Extra pavers for edge cuts, curves, and breakage.
Estimated paver needed
143 pavers
The pavers are the visible tenth of the job. What determines whether they stay flat is the base beneath them and the edge restraint around them, and both are larger quantities than the surface.
- Patio area
- 130 sq ft
- Coverage per paver
- 1 sq ft
They open the calculator with your figures already in it
Paver Calculator: 143 pavers — shown in imperial, US market. The link sets both, so the result they see is the one on your screen.
Estimated cost — your price
This site holds no price list for this material — local prices vary too much to publish honestly. Enter your supplier's price and the result is costed with it.
Paver setting-out grid — drawn from your figures
A 3.96 x 3.05 m patio set out in 0.3 x 0.3 m pavers, stack bond.
A DXF plan in metres. Opens in AutoCAD, LibreCAD, QCAD and most jobsite viewers.
What this drawing does not show (3)
- The bond. This is drawn as a stack bond because the calculator counts by AREA and assumes no pattern — running bond, herringbone and basketweave all cover the same area and change only the cuts.
- Joint width and edge restraint.
- Where the cuts fall, which depends on which corner you start from.
It is a setting-out aid drawn from the figures you entered, not a construction drawing, and nobody has checked it against a design.
What this calculation does not cover
- Excludes the sub-base, bedding layer and jointing sand, each of which has its own depth and its own compaction allowance.
- Excludes the edge restraint, without which the field spreads laterally under traffic and the joints open.
- Does not model cutting waste on a curved or angled layout, which is far higher than on a rectangular field.
Signing it off, and the cost of not bothering
A crossing built without approval is not a crossing. It is an unauthorised interference with the highway, and the remedy is removal and reinstatement of the footway at the owner's expense — worse than never having built it, because the frontage ends up where it started with a bill attached. The version that actually bites is quieter: the crossing survives six years, the house is sold, and the buyer's conveyancing search asks the authority whether it was ever authorised. An unanswerable question at that point holds up a sale, and retrospective approval is neither quick nor certain.
Be straight with owners about what a dropped kerb buys them, too. It makes the crossing lawful to use. It does not make the highway in front of it theirs, and enforcement against a vehicle parked across it depends on the local parking regime and the markings that go with it. That expectation is better corrected during the quotation than after the works.
Close the job on paper as well as on the ground. Keep the approval reference and the drawing number the work was built to, photograph the formation and the kerb bed before they are covered, record the finished levels at channel and boundary, and hand the owner the lot. Six years on, when somebody asks whether the crossing was authorised and built to specification, that folder is the entire answer — ten minutes on the day, and impossible afterwards.
Pricing across the boundary
Two quotations on one frontage: a private side you control and a public side built to somebody else's drawing. Quantify them separately, because only one of them can be revised after approval.
- Usable frontage area at vehicular build-up — Measured back from the adopted highway boundary, not the garden wall, to the nearest thing a car cannot pass — and priced at the vehicular sub-base depth rather than the patio depth already in the ground.
- Sub-base tonnage for the crossing itself — Compacted depth off the authority's standard drawing, converted through a compacted density; delivered close to the day of the closure, since a footway offers no lawful stockpile.
- Kerb run including both transition units — The dropper length plus a taper each side, with any radius or splay units measured separately because their geometry is not the constant section.
- Bed and haunch concrete, as a section times a run — Dimensions and concrete class from the authority's specification; the haunch is what stops the kerb rotating and is not a place to economise.
- Reinstatement and relaid paving at the joint — The boundary courses come up on almost every job; blocks lifted there go back there, and any new material is placed where it reads as deliberate.
- Permits, closures and diversions — Street works licence, skip permit, traffic management to the Red Book, and any statutory undertaker's diversion — the last of which is a lead time before it is a cost.
Opens the calculators above on one screen with the dimensions from this article already filled in. Quantities only — this site publishes no price list, because local prices vary too much to publish honestly.