How many pavers, tonnes and bags do you need?

Ten minutes with a tape beats any satellite tool, and it is the difference between a quote we can stand behind over the phone and a guess. Do it like this.

1. Break the shape into rectangles. Almost every driveway, courtyard and alfresco is two or three rectangles with a bite out of one corner. Measure each rectangle in metres to one decimal place, multiply length by width, and add them together. Do not try to measure an L shape in one go.
2. Measure at the widest point, not the average. Pavers are ordered for the widest part, and the offcuts from the narrow part are your wastage. Averaging is how people end up 40 units short on the last afternoon.
3. Curves get the box treatment. Measure the smallest rectangle that fully contains the curve, then subtract roughly a third of each corner you are cutting off. It over-estimates slightly, which is exactly what you want when ordering.
4. Measure the coping separately. Pool coping and step nosings are ordered by the lineal metre, not by area, and they cost $90 to $160 per lineal metre supplied and laid. Run the tape along the water line and write that number down on its own.
5. Photograph the tape. At each measurement, take a photo with the tape in the shot. It takes two seconds and it settles every later argument about whether the driveway was 5.4 or 5.8 metres wide.
6. Sketch it and send it. Draw the shape on paper, write the metres on each side, photograph the sketch and attach it to your quote request. A sketch with real numbers on it gets you an accurate figure the same day instead of a range.

Useful reference dimensions for Geraldton blocks: a single car width is 3.0 to 3.2 metres, a double driveway is 5.4 to 6.0 metres, a single parking bay is about 2.6 by 5.4 metres or 14 square metres, a comfortable path is 1.0 to 1.2 metres wide and 0.9 metres is the practical minimum, and a caravan or boat pad wants a full metre longer than the van plus room to swing the door. Note that the crossover, the bit between your boundary and the road, is not yours to size or specify: it is controlled by the City of Greater Geraldton and covered on our crossover paving page.

Under-ordering. Every time. Pavers are manufactured in batches, and colour drifts between production runs by an amount you would never notice on a pallet and cannot un-see across a driveway. If you order 2,250 units for a 45 square metre driveway with no wastage allowance, you will be 200 units short by mid-afternoon on laying day, and those 200 will come from whatever the yard has on the floor three weeks later. The fix is not a touch-up. The fix is lifting and relaying a whole section so the mismatch reads as a deliberate band. Ten per cent of extra units costs 10 per cent. Getting it wrong costs a section.

Second on the list, and specific to this town: sizing the driveway for the car and not the boat. A very large share of Geraldton houses keep a boat, a caravan or a camper trailer at home, and the hardstand that gets added two years later is where the paving mismatch problem shows up again. If a van is going to live beside the house, pave for it now, or at minimum lay the base and keep a pallet of the same batch under a tarp. A 6 metre van needs about 7 metres of hardstand plus room to swing the door and the tow vehicle in front of it.

Third, the base. People size the paved area carefully and then order base for exactly that area. The base has to run wider than the pavers so the edge restraint has something to sit on, and it has to be deep enough for the heaviest thing that will ever park on it, not the family car. If a concrete truck, a removal truck or a loaded boat trailer will ever be on it, that is a 150mm base conversation. Our specification page goes through the grades and depths, and how long paving lasts here shows what happens when the base was sized for the wrong vehicle.