Turn Part Of Drive Into A Patio? Advise, Please!

Hi all.

I've spent a big chunk of the summer tearing out a 30' long section of my driveway that runs along the side of my house. The driveway is narrow and is really too small for a car to use without it being a PITA. The driveway ends in a garage that is "finished" (i.e. it was built to be an office), so it's not really a garage. It has never had a car in it.

I pulled this part of the driveway out because it had cracked lengthwise and shifted, and so when water hit it, it poured toward the house. The result was that the water eroded a sizeable hole underneath our side-door stoop, and that it usually made its way into our basement. All of this, really, began as an effort to solve that problem.

I have all the concrete removed, although I've left a little as filler to raise up the eroded area.

Now, when I began this project, I was simply going to put concrete back in. But the more I think about it, the more I want to put in a 4' wide concrete sidewalk (because we need to shovel snow) along the side of the house leading to the back yard and then, in the 8' section of what used to be driveway, put down pea stone with flagstone on top of it, put up a fence, and basically turn the side of our house into a patio.

Does anyone have any thoughts about this? I ask because my neighbor thinks it's a horrible idea to lose my approach to the driveway and that I should just pour concrete like everyone else. I think that if I do that, I give up potentially liveable and interesting space on the side of my house.

Should I be worried about drainage if I do this? I can certainly build in some kind of small guttering when I pour the sidewalk.

If anyone has any advice or thoughts, I'd appreciate it.

No kids. No plans for kids. I'm talking about packing it pretty tightly with flagstone, too, so it would essentially be like a driveway.


It's south facing, but the climate here in Utah is such that by about 7:30, it's nice outside.


Part of the issue with the old driveway was indeed bad, bad, bad guttering. I'm going to fix that (routing the offending gutter elsewhere through maybe a french drain, since I've got the driveway torn out and can just dig a trench. Hell, at the moment, I'm just considering having the gutter pour into a drain, then run PVC underground and out to the edge of the drive (we are on a slight slope).

You know, I haven't actually measured it. I looks about 10-12 feet. The issue is that there is a stoop and a window well on one side and a big flowerbed/planter on the other side that eat into it, and so when I park my Tacoma in it, I can only open the door on one side.


See below.


That's actually what I'm planning and just mis-spoke. I'll do a double-door gate that will allow complete access to the area by vehicle. As I've said, my plan is to just make a different kind of driveway, so I'm not actually changing anything other than what is covering the ground. So SCREW THE CITY!

Actually, we have no plans to sell the house or move or change jobs (finding another situation like we have would be very difficult), and my thinking is that something happened and we had to sell the house, I could just put in concrete then. It would really only be about $400 worth of mud, and I could do it in a few days.


I've been poking around on that lately. Part of why I want gravel and stone is drainage. I don't want to have to worry about the concrete cracking/shifting and shunting water down the side of my house (again), and in my gut, I seem to think that stone and gravel will drain nicely and not get into the house. Do you have any experience with anything like this, Nick? Any of your houses have gravel vs concrete driveways butting up against them?

That's what I've been thinking about today. The planter is a big rock wall, and that theme is continued in the back. I'd like to have a driveway that complemented that.

From the front:



From the back:



All concrete is gone up to the entrance of the garage. All the rubble is gone now. I'll take another pic in the morning to give you a better sense of what it looks like.

PS:

Ignore the ghetto looking stoop. I put some Saltillo tile on it last year just to see what it was like to work with, and let's just say that it didn't deal well with record snowfall.

PPS:

Also ignore the horrifically overgrown planter. It's getting dug out and redone. Some moron planted vinca in it, which I'm determined to kill.

This is sort of what I'm hoping it'll look like. The brown will be flagstone.

I'm not sure what you're seeing, but the only relevant water dumping place is the little green tube on the view from the front. That's the one I'm going to run to the front of the house.

And yeah, what you're seeing is a window well.

That's exactly why I'm considering this and what I'm considering doing, although I'm thinking that I'll make the gutter out of cement (I'll lay a 6" wide path between the sidewalk and the flag and make it slightly concave with something like a paint can lid). Edit: but the gravel drain would look nice and I may just do that.

But yeah. Frost heave is an issue here, and if I put concrete down, it'll last 10 years before I have to re-do it.

That is exactly what I'm planning.

Man, those things grow on trees here in Utah.