Driveways, parking pads and site access
Parksville Excavating cuts the firm ground under a driveway, lays geotextile over the soft spots and places pit run and crush in compacted lifts on driveways across Oceanside. If your new or altered access comes onto Highway 19A or Highway 4, it needs a highway use permit from the Ministry of Transportation and Transit, applied for through the PASport portal.
Most of your driveway is the part you never see. What's under the gravel is what makes it last. You see the wearing surface, but the ground underneath — the subgrade — and whether water can drain off it are what really decide how long it lasts.
Building up from the subgrade
We take organics out first. A drive built over topsoil or buried wood will settle unevenly no matter how well the surface is placed, so we cut down to competent material, and the ground dictates how deep that cut goes.
Where the firm ground under the driveway is soft, we lay fabric before any aggregate. It stops the pit run from being driven into the soft material below, and it costs a fraction of the stone it protects. We then place pit run as the structural layer and crush on top as the running surface, each placed in layers and compacted rather than dumped to depth.
The bit people skip is the crown — the slight hump down the middle. A surface that sheds water to both sides sheds it before it can get into the base, and a flat drive holds the water that eventually destroys it.
The road end, and who has to approve it
Where a drive meets a provincial highway, a highway use permit is needed to create or change that access, and the application goes through the PASport portal. There is an exemption worth knowing: a property off a provincially maintained side road outside municipal boundaries, where the access is not onto a controlled-access highway or a numbered route, does not need one.
Inside Parksville and Qualicum Beach the municipality has its own process, and in the Regional District of Nanaimo the building permit already covers the works. A culvert usually comes with the crossing, sized to the ditch rather than to the drive, and set at the flow line so the ditch keeps working after the drive is in.
What wears out, and what it costs to put right
If your drive is rutting or going soft after rain, the base underneath has failed. Putting fresh crush over it buys you a season and no more. We take the failed section out and rebuild it from the bottom, because that is the only fix that holds.
The depth of the cut, the haul distance for material in and spoil out, and whether the ground needs fabric all drive the cost. On the sand and gravel across most of the coastal lots the build-up is straightforward; on wetter inland ground it's the separation layer and the drainage that carry your price.
The driveway build process
Route and levels — We set the line of the drive, the grades it has to hold, and where water crosses it.
Cut and separate — We take organics out, expose the firm ground underneath, and lay fabric where it's soft.
Build up — We place pit run as structure and crush as surface, each compacted in layers.
Crown and ditch — We shape the surface to shed water, set culverts to the flow line, and leave the ditches running.
In practice
- Situation
- A Coombs acreage needing 180 metres of new drive from the road to a building site at the back of the parcel.
- Complication
- The route crossed a low wet section where the existing track had rutted to axle depth every winter, and the parcel sits inside the Agricultural Land Reserve.
- Resolution
- We ran fabric and a deeper pit run section through the wet ground only, rather than lifting the whole length, and kept the fill volume under the threshold that would have needed a Notice of Intent.
People also ask
How thick does a gravel driveway need to be?
We decide the thickness from what's actually under the driveway, not a standard number. Firm sand and gravel needs far less build-up than soft or wet ground, so we set the depth once the cut shows us what's there.
Is geotextile worth it?
On soft ground, fabric — geotextile — is the cheapest part of the assembly, and it protects the most expensive part. It stops the structural stone from being pushed down into material that can't support it.
Does a new driveway onto the highway need a permit?
Creating or changing an access onto a provincial highway needs a highway use permit, applied for through PASport. Accesses off a provincially maintained side road outside municipal boundaries, not onto a controlled-access or numbered route, are exempt.
Related: Land clearing and site prep · Foundation digs and backfill · Drainage and perimeter drains · Permits and BC 1 Call · Qualicum Beach · Coombs and Errington · French Creek · Nanoose Bay