Driveway & Paths

It took a number of years before we decided to put in a driveway and the garden paths, this was mainly due to not living permanently in the house and the preference for greenery. However early 2020 it was decided to do something to avoid getting wet/dirty feet in the rainy season and the pictures below show before and after shots with some notes on the considerations made.

There was one major design consideration to have no straight lines and flow pattern that encouraged people to walk using the pathways. To get the basic design confirmed before engaging anyone, I bought 100 meters of blue pvc piping that is firm and easily bendable, cut it to the various lengths needed and did a layout on the lawn to see if design was practical. After many iterations of moving the blue pipes until comfortable, the design was documented as red lines in the diagram below and used as the basis for initial discussions with contractors.

It is easy to forget the past views from the house, so the below is series of before and after shots from key perspectives.

I quite liked the monolithic green of the lawn, but overtime thought that green was dominating and needed some structure to establish boundaries. I also wanted circles that could be garden beds in the future, with the exception of the large circle that has a tree planted just off center that I hope in 20 years or so will dominate the large circle to the extent that the canopy is as wide as the circumference. What is not seen in the picture is that the small circles are aligned with the orange gate circle which is an inverted pattern in this parking area.

We don't own a car, so the parking spots are just for visitors, which is kind of ironic as in 2020 the lock-downs meant there is almost no chance that there were visitors. In hindsight the brickwork makes the property more interesting, something that I appreciate more now.

The paths were slightly elevated and the hard edges can be seen in the above 2020 picture, while refreshing the the lawn, the opportunity was taken to get more soil and ramp up lawn on either side of the paths to remove the hard edges was done in 2021 as shown in the picture below.

The 2020 driveway and path project was expected to take one month to implement as per the implementation timeline, I paid a premium for a one month solution, however the Bulacan company that was doing the work was asked to leave after taking 3 times that duration; plus exhibiting poor project execution, under staffing, poor brick quality, filthy onsite habits and not able to complete absolutely anything; plus destroyed a lot of grass areas not part of the project. They were really shocking and not unusual in many regards to what happens here in the Philippines; false quality claims, which makes receiving quality work a challenge. Of-course I will suffer in the future as the poor quality bricks will dissolve away but at least I managed to finish it. I really should of known that I was in trouble when management didn't know the difference between a shovel and a spade and at the end of week 1 after turning up with less than half of the people needed to maintain progress, were tracking two weeks behind schedule based on work performed.

Specifications

Brick Size was 20cm by 10 cm, in a two colour combination of red and dark grey.
Area paved was about 330 square meters of paving, 17,000 bricks estimated to be needed {50 bricks per square meter}.
Paths 1.2 meters wide; with curves with no straights and where they meet the house, were merged into a half circle landing pads that were the same level as the lower house step.
Driveway and parking area at the front by the orange gate and blue gates have concrete base underneath them with the driveway paving flowing into the garage seamlessly.
Small circle inside diameter was 4 meters with a path width of 30 cm; the large circle inside diameter was 12 meters with a path width of 60cm.
Wastage was huge, I was amazed that a brick making company could produce so many defective bricks, then send them to the site and worse install them; then remove them then spoil the good ones already laid, I struggled to keep up with the wastage piling up and used these at my back garden as the company was not removing them off the site. On the positive side there is no need to go to a gym when there are bricks to be moved everyday to be turned into a garden bed at the back of the property.
Timeline - 1 month as sold by company however after 4 months of elapsed time, not one proactive communication from the company, combined with the shockingly absent supervisory / management, plus no onsite quality control including no time or scope management. So it was almost 4 months to the day after starting after a period of particularly poor work that included the entire team being absent for days, the project was terminated. A manager+architect finally turned up (after several requests) after a week where some remote manager had removed more people to go to another troubled project, I walked the two of them through the problems and presented a status report I had created; listened to their acknowledgement/poor excuses of the numerous problems; then terminated the relationship on the spot. Simply had enough of the poor performance from this Bulacan brick company and it was a relief to get rid of the company.

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