Paving Savings - Small Driveways, Big Discounts

How you can get big discounts from paving companies, even when you only have a small driveway.

For paving companies, big jobs mean bigger discounts when buying raw materials – discounts that can be passed on to you, the customer.

From a paving company’s perspective, when it comes to the cost of a paving or driveway job, the larger the area, the more materials it’s going to need, hence a bigger discount when purchasing the raw materials and the saving that can be passed onto you the customer. The labour’s relatively fixed – x amount for x man hours the job requires.

Other factors may include the distance the installation team have to drive from their premises to carry out the installation and special accessibility issues on site.

If you only have a small area you want block paving or covering with impressed concrete or tarmac, you’ll have a harder time getting discounts from a paving installation company that doesn't have a lot of leeway with which to negotiate discounts or savings on raw materials unless buying large amounts.

One way around this is to offer the paving additional work on the property.

In the long run, whilst initially paying a little more, you’ll save money because of the higher costs of having paving work done in small chunks - assuming can get a paving company to come out and quote at all for paths and patios separately at all.

What about including the pathway up the side of your house in the paving project? You’ll also benefit from the closest possible match of materials and levels and avoid the possibility of disturbing previously laid projects, if you come back to increase them later on.

If you’ve got an existing patio or seating area - or you’d like one installed - then why not consider including that too? If your driveway is for one car only, then there’s a potential to add an area the size of a medium family car to the job, by getting a quote for paving the rear area as well.

Consider also, when having a larger area paved, that the installation company may be able to draw upon additional fitting teams so you may find you get the whole job done within the same time frame as a smaller job, which may have previously precluded a large workforce.

Other areas you may be able to negotiate a better overall job discount on include asking the paving company about landscaping of the area around the driveway, and building boundary walls or fences.

Finally – if you’re considering having your driveway re-laid, what about your neighbours? They may be thinking along similar lines. It can’t hurt to make a polite enquiry with them – if only to warn them in advance of the work you’re thinking of having done. If they’re in agreement, then perhaps the two households can negotiate a larger discount based on the collective size of the area that will want re-surfacing. This is especially effective where two properties share a central driveway area or access road.

The first stage in any home improvement project is to get an idea of cost. That’s where PavingQuoter can help. Enter a few simple measurements (don’t worry if they’re not exact) and our sophisticated quoting system will calculate a price, based on UK average prices, there and then for you.