DIY or pay a paver?
We are a paving business telling you when not to hire a paving business. For a courtyard or a path, do it yourself and enjoy it. For a driveway on Geraldton's sand or reactive clay, the maths turns against you fast. Here is the honest line, with real 2026 material and hire costs.
Load and size, not skill.
Laying pavers is not a mystery. Anyone reasonably handy can produce a genuinely good small pavement in a weekend, and plenty of Geraldton homeowners do. Flat paving is not registered building work in Western Australia, so there is no licence stopping you from doing it on your own property. The reason we still get called out to rebuild DIY driveways is not that the owners lacked skill. It is that the job they took on needed a compactor, a level and a base spec, and it looked like it only needed a screed rail and a rubber mallet.
The useful dividing line is load and size. Under roughly 20 square metres, carrying nothing heavier than people and a barbecue, is honest DIY. A garden path, a shed pad, a courtyard, a clothesline area, a small alfresco. If it sinks a bit you lift that corner on a Saturday and nobody dies. Once you cross into vehicle load, though, the pavement has to distribute a couple of tonnes through a base into the ground, over and over, for decades. That is engineering, and Australian Standard AS 3727.1 spells out what it takes for residential pavements. It is not exotic. It is just non-negotiable.
The real DIY maths on a 45 square metre driveway.
Everyone assumes DIY halves the price. Let us actually price it, in 2026 Geraldton money, for a typical double driveway in concrete pavers:
- Concrete pavers: roughly $28 to $45 per square metre from a Geraldton supplier, so about $1,300 to $2,000 for 45 square metres plus cutting waste.
- Road base: about $65 to $95 per cubic metre delivered. At 150mm compacted over 45 square metres you need close to 8 to 9 tonnes, call it $450 to $700.
- Bedding sand and stabilised jointing sand: $250 to $450 all up. Do not substitute washed sand for the jointing here.
- Plate compactor hire: $70 to $110 a day, and you will want it for at least two days.
- Brick saw hire: $60 to $90 a day, plus blades. Budget two days.
- Spoil removal: a 45 square metre dig at 250mm is roughly 11 cubic metres of soil. Skips and tip fees, $300 to $600.
- Edge restraint: concrete for haunching, $150 to $300 in bagged mix, and it is the bit most people skip.
That lands somewhere around $2,600 to $4,300 in materials and hire. Our fitted rate for the same job is $75 to $110 per square metre supplied and laid, so $3,400 to $5,000, plus $25 to $45 per linear metre for the edge restraint. The genuine saving is roughly $1,200 to $2,000. For that you are buying yourself 60 to 80 hours of the hardest physical work in the trade, in a Geraldton summer, with a hired compactor and no warranty at the end. Some people happily take that trade. Plenty look at the number and quietly ring a paver. Both are rational. Our pricing guide has the full 2026 fitted rates if you want to compare properly.
The four things DIY jobs get wrong.
We have rebuilt enough of these to know the failure list by heart, and it is remarkably consistent. Not enough base. A trailer-load of road base looks enormous spread out and compacts down to nothing, so people settle for 50 or 75mm where 150mm was needed. Compacting in one thick layer. A plate compactor only really works the top 75 to 100mm, so a single 150mm dump leaves the bottom half loose no matter how many passes you do. No edge restraint. Without a concrete haunch holding every side in, the pavers creep outwards under load, the joints open, and the pavement slowly unravels. And loose washed jointing sand, which the Geraldton Doctor blows straight out of the joints over one summer.
What makes these expensive rather than annoying is that three of the four are invisible on the day you sweep up and stand back proud. The pavement looks perfect. It stays looking perfect for a year or two. Then it starts to dish where the car wheels track, and by then the only fix is to lift the lot and rebuild the base. There is more on spotting that early on the warning signs guide.
Three jobs that are never DIY in Geraldton.
Some work is off the table regardless of how handy you are. Retaining walls over 500mm high, or any wall of any height holding back a surcharge such as a driveway, pool or a neighbour's soil, need an engineer's design to AS 4678 and a building permit from the City of Greater Geraldton. That is law, not opinion, and a failed retaining wall is a safety event. See retaining walls and the permit guide.
The crossover, the strip between the kerb and your property boundary, sits in the road reserve and needs City approval before anyone touches it. And pool surrounds need a certified slip rating under AS/NZS 4586, correct falls away from the shell, and cutting around coping and skimmer boxes that is genuinely hard to do neatly. See pool surrounds.
The Geraldton ground makes it harder than the YouTube video.
Most paving tutorials online are filmed somewhere with obliging soil. Geraldton is not that. Out at Tarcoola Beach, Drummond Cove and Glenfield you are on deep coastal dune sand that drains brilliantly and migrates under load, so the base needs a geotextile separation layer beneath it or the road base slowly disappears into the sand. Inland and around Wandina you are on reactive clay loam that swells with our 440mm of winter rain and shrinks through the dry. Neither is a disaster, but both need a decision made before the first shovel goes in, and neither is in the video.
DIY paving questions.
Can I lay my own paving in Geraldton?
Yes, and for a small courtyard, a garden path or a shed pad you probably should. Flat paving is not registered building work in Western Australia, so no licence is required to lay it on your own property. The honest dividing line is load and size. Foot-traffic areas under about 20 square metres are a genuinely realistic weekend job. A driveway carrying a car is a different animal, because it needs a compacted road-base sub-base and restrained edges that are hard to get right without a plate compactor, a laser level and some practice.
How much does DIY paving really save in Geraldton?
Less than most people expect. On a 45 square metre driveway our fitted rate is $75 to $110 per square metre for concrete pavers, so $3,400 to $5,000. Doing it yourself, the pavers are roughly $28 to $45 per square metre, road base about $65 to $95 per cubic metre delivered, bedding sand and stabilised jointing another few hundred, plus a plate compactor hire at $70 to $110 a day, a brick saw at $60 to $90 a day, and skip or tip fees for the spoil. You land near $2,600 to $4,300 in materials and hire, so the saving is roughly $1,200 to $2,000 for about 60 to 80 hours of hard physical work.
What do DIY pavers get wrong most often in Geraldton?
Four things, and they are the same four every time. Not enough base, because a trailer-load of road base looks like plenty until you compact it. Compacting in one thick layer instead of 75 to 100mm lifts, which leaves the bottom loose. Leaving out the edge restraint, which is the single biggest cause of paving creeping and spreading. And using loose washed jointing sand, which the Geraldton Doctor sea breeze empties out of the joints within a season. Three of those four are invisible on the day you finish and obvious two years later.
Do I need a permit to pave my own driveway in Geraldton?
Not for the paving itself on your own land. You do need separate approval from the City of Greater Geraldton for the crossover between the kerb and your property boundary, because that section sits in the road reserve and is not yours to build on. You also need a building permit and an engineer's design for any retaining wall over 500mm high, or any wall of any height that is holding back a surcharge such as a driveway, pool or a neighbour's soil. Those two are not optional and not DIY territory.
When is DIY paving definitely a false economy?
Any driveway carrying vehicles, any pool surround, any retaining work, and anything on a slope or on the deep coastal sand at Tarcoola Beach, Drummond Cove or Glenfield where a geotextile separation layer is needed. In those cases a failure is not cosmetic, it is a rebuild. Redoing a failed DIY driveway costs $45 to $80 per square metre for the lift and relay on top of what you already spent on materials, which puts you well past what a professional job would have cost in the first place.
Suburbs we quote and advise in.
Not sure which side of the line your job is on?
Send us the size and what will drive on it. If it is a genuine DIY job we will tell you so, for free.