Resin driveway restoration across Yorkshire

Yorkshire is not one climate or one kind of ground. The Pennines run down the western side, with millstone grit and sandstone under thin, acid soil and rain that arrives most weeks of the year. A belt of magnesian limestone runs north to south through the middle of the region. The Dales to the north-west are limestone again, and the east flattens out into the Vale of York and the clay and chalk farmland towards the coast. A resin driveway laid in Holmfirth and one laid outside York are the same material, but they do not age in the same way.

The wet west and the drier east

Rainfall falls away steadily from the Pennines towards the east coast. In the Pennine valleys, around places like Huddersfield, a resin-bound surface can stay saturated for days. It is porous by design, so it soaks water in rather than shedding it, and a damp, shaded surface is exactly where algae and moss establish. Further east the drives dry quicker and green later, but they take more direct sun, and the binder in resin degrades under ultraviolet light. Colour dulls, the sheen goes, and the stone starts to show through. That is a different job from removing growth: a clean deals with dirt, and a recoat deals with a tired binder.

Stone, brick and the ground beneath

The housing tracks the geology. In the west and the old mill towns, the terraces and villas are built of local gritstone and sandstone, which darkens and holds moisture. In the limestone belt, walls and gateposts are paler, and lime and mortar dust can wash onto a nearby surface. Ex-mining villages across the coalfield have long rows of brick and stone terraces, many with small frontages that were later paved over. Towards the Humber and the Wolds the build is more often brick, with larger plots.

What the drive is laid on matters more than any of this. Resin is often put down as an overlay on old tarmac or concrete, and it is only as good as that base. Clay soils across the Vale shrink and swell with wet and dry spells, and a base that moves cracks. Those cracks come up through the resin, and no amount of cleaning or recoating closes them. Our guide to telling bound from bonded resin is the first thing to read, because the two fail differently.

New-build estates and ageing ones

Yorkshire has had steady estate building since the 1960s, and large swathes of it carry resin drives that went in at the same time as the houses or soon after. Because a whole street's drives were often laid together, they tend to reach the same point of wear together. The things to watch in the first few years are in looking after a new resin driveway. After that the questions are the ones everyone has: how often to clean, when to recoat and what it costs, covered in cleaning, recoating, resealing and cost.

Problems that turn up across the county

Several things happen everywhere. Leaf litter and tree shade feed algae, and a drive under a mature tree will green anywhere in the county. Winter grit and de-icing salt get tracked onto drives and scuff the surface. The freeze-thaw cycle works on any weak spot, and loose stones are the visible result, as the post on loose stones explains. And the most damaging mistake of all is a domestic pressure washer held too close, which strips binder from around the stone. The way back from that is the work described under resin restoration, not another wash.

Where we work in Yorkshire

We are based in Wakefield and cover West Yorkshire and the surrounding areas. If you are near the edge of that and not sure whether we reach you, send us the postcode and we will tell you. The Wakefield page is where to start if you are near us. The town pages for Leeds, Barnsley, Huddersfield and Sheffield go into the detail of each, and nearer to Wakefield there are pages for Pontefract, Castleford, Dewsbury, Batley, Bradford and Halifax. The map on our contact page shows the area we cover.