What tarmac actually is
Tarmacadam is stone graded to a set size, bound together with bitumen and laid hot. It is rolled while it is still hot, which is what locks the stone together and gives the finished surface its strength. It comes in black and in red, and it can be laid by machine or by hand.
Machine laid tarmac gives a flatter, more even finish and is what we use wherever a paver can get to. Hand laying is for narrow paths, awkward corners, edges up to buildings and anywhere a machine physically will not fit. Most jobs are a mixture of the two.
The ground underneath matters more than the tarmac
A surface fails from the bottom up. If the ground below it holds water, or was never compacted, or has no edge to hold it in, the tarmac will crack, sink at the wheel tracks and break away at the sides no matter how well it was laid.
So most of the time on a surfacing job is spent before any tarmac arrives: digging out, getting the muck away, putting stone in, compacting it, setting the falls so water runs off where it should, and putting in kerbs or edgings. We do that ourselves rather than subcontracting it. If you want the detail, it is on the groundworks page.
One layer or two
A domestic drive is often laid in two layers: a coarser base course to give it strength, then a finer surface course on top for the finish. Something taking farm or commercial traffic will have a thicker base course and sometimes a thicker top as well.
On a sound existing surface we can sometimes lay a single overlay straight over the top. That is cheaper and quicker, but it only works where the surface below is not moving and where the extra height does not cause problems at doorways and gullies.
Black or red
Black is the usual choice and is what most drives, roads and car parks are. Red is laid exactly the same way and is normally used to pick out an entrance, a path or a parking area against black. There is no difference in how they perform.
Bigger surfacing work
Not all of this is domestic. A good part of our tarmac work is private roads, estate roads, farm access tracks, yards and commercial car parks, where the questions are about load, drainage and how long the site can be shut rather than about how it looks from the front gate.
