Parking on grass in winter!

[BenGarner93]

Didn't exactly know where to post this.

I have to park on the curb on my street at it's a narrow street and its double parked, however the "curb" has a rectangular area of grass which as you can imagine is a mess in the current weather, there is a giant hole appearing which my car drops into every time I park it, I need to fix this "hole".

Has anybody had the same experience parking up?

What could I fill it with??? I'm not convinced compost would hold up well and stones would most likely end up chipping the car and my house windows after the little ****s round my area start picking them up.

 

[dave]

concrete

remove all grass and add hardcore first

what i did with my front grass was got 2 ton of 20mm shingle, then grass seeded it, so it still looks like lawn but you don't sink

 

[Most Easterly Pandas]

Whos area of land is it? Yours or the councils? If not yours then it sounds like you're illegally parking (only an assumption), if so I'd just park up the road and walk.

 

[colin79666]

Solution - park somewhere else.
Grass isn't a good thing to park on. In the winter it turns into a mudbath. In the summer you can set fire to it if dries out and our hot exhaust comes into contact with it.

 

[sludgeguts]

Buy some grass protection mesh.
A cheapo plastic mesh fence would probably be ok as a temporary fix.

 

[GrandeGuy]

What you need to find is them 1970's council looking concrete blocks that have4 segments in them and lay them, grass will grow through and council will never know, if you start cementing you could be charged with destruction or something daft and they'll charge you to put it back.

 

[dave]

i remember them, you could get a mould and make them

 

[GrandeGuy]

i remember them, you could get a mould and make them

http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/SMALL-WALL-BLOCK-PAVING-MOULD-CONCRETE-CASTING-/141158450457
:slayer:

 

[GrandeGuy]

Just had a fantastic idea for my drive
I wanted grass but hate the idea of winter mud
Now I can have grass and traction

 

[Most Easterly Pandas]

What you need to find is them 1970's council looking concrete blocks that have4 segments in them and lay them, grass will grow through and council will never know, if you start cementing you could be charged with destruction or something daft and they'll charge you to put it back.

Wouldn't that be classed as fly tipping then

 

[gadge]

What you need to find is them 1970's council looking concrete blocks that have4 segments in them and lay them, grass will grow through and council will never know, if you start cementing you could be charged with destruction or something daft and they'll charge you to put it back.

My front garden wall is made up with some of these

 

[The Beard]

My front garden wall is made up with some of these

A-ha. Sounds like a sales pitch coming up here.

 

[sludgeguts]

Toolstation sell a 'ground guard' for £4.48.
You only need buy enough to form tracks for your wheels to drive on.
http://www.toolstation.com/shop/Ground+Guard/p94411

 

[The Beard]

On a more serious note, it does depend on who owns the verge. In theory, you could be prosecuted for Criminal Damage, but I say "In theory" because it would have to be proved that you'd caused the damage in the first place and hadn't just parked on a patch of mud that already existed.

You also might like to consider the effect this patch of mud has on the appearance of your own area.

Sometimes the law of unintended consequences applies, such as while I was going out with the future Mrs. Beard, I often used to drive her home to Middlesbrough and stay at her parents home which didn't have a drive but did have a wide kerb and a 6 -7' grass verge in front. This had the benefit of allowing me to get the car completely off the road. One day we decided to go up using a vehicle we'd been leant at work as a demonstrator. Namely an IVECO TurboDaily panel van. It was a very entertaining journey up through Lancashire and parts of North Yorkshire harassing an XR3i on the way.

When we got there I could just get the (rather heavy) TD onto the verge and found the next morning that not only had it rained for the previous three days, but it rained overnight as well. A couple of days later when we came to leave, no matter how gently I tried to get the van moving, it just dug itself into the grass which soon began to bear a striking similarity to the Somme.

Eventually, with the aid of neighbours using spades and a Land Rover, the beast broke free. Unfortunately there were two rather large trenches roughly where the rear wheels had been.

The unintended consequence? Middlesbrough Council decided to plant some trees that would prevent a car from getting on there again, so a certain road got some nice green trees and the area was improved. Nowadays they'd probably just put some very large concrete blocks there instead.

 

[BenGarner93]

Sorry for the late reply, the council own the land, and parking any further down would leave me next to a junction. Both sides are grassy and I cannot park on the road because it would block the street due to other cars parking across the road.

So no concrete or any drastic changes available, however http://www.toolstation.com/shop/Ground+Guard/p94411 as posted by sludgeguts seems a good idea, however too fill the crater I've created I'd have to compost it, would this survive under the ground guard? Also would the ground have to be dry to fit this correctly?

Also we did ask the council if they could possibly concrete it over and they sent somebody out to have a look at it and he took some pictures. But we haven't heard anything since, now that could be a really bad sign or they could be looking into it.

 

[sludgeguts]

No experience of installing these things but I imagine they are best installed when the ground is sodden - make them easier to push in just by standing on them? I guess the normal method is to lay them where you want & drive on them to push them in?


Also, for the craters, probably best to go on your local freecycle for a load of topsoil. Doesn't have to be best quality.
pack as much into the craters as you can, ensuring the surface is fairly high & stomp it down plenty to compact it.


With regards to the concrete blocks idea - if you were to use this method in your garden (for example), might be better making your own as not sure how well these things would stand up to being driven on.


Edit. OK, forget all that. A quick google shows you take out the turf, lay this stuff then fill the gaps. Seemingly, the way to reinforce existing grass for something like a temporary car park would be to lay some mesh. Maybe buy some cheapo plastic fencing stuff, roll it out where your tyres will go & peg it down with something like plastic tent pegs?