Block Paving in Portsmouth

Why block paving still suits Portsmouth properties

Block paving is the most forgiving driveway surface in a city of narrow plots and awkward boundaries. Blocks can be cut to follow a bay window, a bin store or a garden wall that is not quite square. A soldier course tidies the edge against a pavement. And when Southern Water or a broadband contractor eventually opens a trench across your frontage, the blocks come up and go back down instead of leaving a tarmac patch.

It also copes with the way people actually use a driveway — turning wheels on a stationary car, a heavy vehicle reversing in, bins dragged across the same line every week — because the load spreads through the interlock rather than sitting on a rigid slab.

Blocks, colours and formats

Standard concrete blocks (200 x 100 x 50mm) are the everyday choice: economical, widely available and produced in brindle, charcoal, buff and red. Fifty millimetre blocks are for driveways; 60mm units are used where heavier loading is expected.

Tumbled and aged blocks have softened edges and a weathered look that sits better against older brickwork in Old Portsmouth and Southsea. Clay pavers keep their colour permanently because it is the fired clay itself rather than a pigment, and they age gracefully. Setts and cobbles in granite or concrete work well for borders, aprons and circular features.

Mixed-size “country cobble” formats give a less regimented finish, and large-format smooth blocks suit contemporary houses. We bring samples on the site visit so you can see them against your brickwork rather than choosing from a brochure photo.

Permeable block paving

A permeable system uses wider joints filled with a clean 2–6mm grit, sitting on an open-graded laying course and a sub-base of washed, single-sized stone. Water drops through the joints and is held in the voids in the stone before soaking away or discharging slowly. There are no gullies to block and no run-off across the footway, which usually keeps the job within permitted development.

It costs more than a standard build-up because the aggregate is more expensive and the excavation is deeper. Where the ground genuinely will not soak away — parts of Portsea Island included — we design it as an attenuation layer with a controlled outlet instead.

Installation and aftercare

Edge restraints are set first and left to gain strength. The screeded laying course is never walked on, blocks are laid face-up from the paving already down, and cuts are made with a disc rather than snapped. Once the full area is laid we joint with kiln-dried sand, vibrate the surface with a plate compactor on a rubber sole, then re-sand until every joint is proud and settled.

Aftercare is straightforward: sweep it, top up the joints occasionally, and treat any weed growth early. A white bloom of efflorescence in the first few months is normal on concrete blocks and washes out with time. See the surface in context on our projects page, or read about full driveway installation.