Concrete driveways in Edgeworth

Driveways in Edgeworth, 2285

Edgeworth lies about 18 km west of the Newcastle CBD, strung along Main Road with Edgeworth Town Square, Minmi Road past the library and George Booth Drive on the Cameron Park side. It was Young Wallsend until late 1960, a mining township of 153 homes in 1947 that only filled after the sewer came in 1959 and the project housing of the 1970s. Nearly nine dwellings in ten are separate houses on that layout. The other half of the story is land. The colliery site was bulldozed for housing in 1992, and today Brush Creek Estate, the lots off Neilson Street, the Transfield Estate off Minmi Road and Cameron Grove South on George Booth Drive are adding hundreds of lots. So the work runs both ways, first pours on the new stages and replacements in the old town.

Benched lots, shallow rock and a creek catchment

Council’s precinct plan for the Brush Creek land is blunt about the ground. Some lots on its western edge are to be founded on shallow rock, fill goes down in 200 mm layers, a cut or fill past 1 metre gets an engineered wall with a subsoil drain, and nothing may pond on compacted fill. Those rules bind one estate, but they describe the benched block a new Edgeworth driveway sits on. Lower down, the suburb is in the Cockle Creek catchment, with a 1981 flood on record. On the state map Edgeworth appears to sit wholly inside the Lake Macquarie Mine Subsidence District, which bears on a shed or a garage rather than the driveway, since Subsidence Advisory NSW lists driveways and hard stand spaces as exempt under every guideline apart from 4 and 5; the guideline for a lot is on the NSW Planning Portal Spatial Viewer.

A first driveway on a small lot, a replacement on a big one

On the new stages lots run as small as 300 to 450 square metres, so the driveway is short and the slab runs hard to the boundary. The builder’s contract usually stops at a single strip, so the first job is plain concrete at the width the garage allows, with the side path and the alfresco added to the same pour. In the old town it is a long driveway on a wide 1970s block that has cracked or dropped, which is a removal and replacement measured for two cars from the outset. Cameron Park next door has the same estate stages without the old township.

What council approves at the kerb

On a new lot the crossing goes in under a Minor Public Works application, and widening the builder’s crossing later is a fresh application with a fresh fee. Council wants at least 3 metres and no more than 4 at the kerb, 125 mm of concrete dowelled into the gutter, and a profile drawing, which on a benched lot shows the step between the verge and the pad. The Section 138 guide has the application in order.

Finishes for two ages of housing

The new stages go dark, with exposed aggregate carried from the driveway to the porch or coloured concrete in charcoal. The older streets mostly replace grey with grey in a broom finish. Council takes an exposed finish on the crossing only when 75 percent or more of the stone is rhyolite or basalt.

Edgeworth rates per square metre

Supplied and laid: plain concrete $95 to $130; paths $90 to $130; patios and alfresco $100 to $180; shed and garage slabs $110 to $150; coloured $115 to $160; exposed aggregate $130 to $185; and about $35 more where an old driveway comes out first. What moves an Edgeworth price is the fill on a benched lot, whose low side wants its base compacted in layers first. The calculator gives a bracket, the cost guide explains it, and the specification and the Section 138 guide are what a quote is measured against.