Bedford paving from Landsdale, about 12 km south
Bedford is about 12 km from IBP Paving in Landsdale and sits inside our regular service area. Typical work here is replacing original driveways, laying brick paths and carport aprons, and putting in soakwells sized to the City of Bayswater's rule. We bring over 20 years of paving experience to each job and stand behind it with a lifetime workmanship warranty.
Tram era houses and State Housing blocks
Bedford's first homes appeared in the 1920s, after the tram line along Beaufort Street was extended. The bigger change came after World War II, when the State Housing Commission built major estates here on wide fronted, deep blocks. The result is a suburb of mostly single detached homes on a regular grid of streets, many of them now 70 years old or more.
That history sets the paving work. Where an original driveway survives on one of these homes it is usually past saving, so the typical job is a full replacement on a new compacted base. Wide frontages give room for a double width driveway, a front path and a paved apron to the carport in one design, and red or brown clay pavers suit the age of the houses. Older lots often carry established trees, and where roots have pushed pavers up we deal with the cause as well as the surface; see lifted pavers and tree roots. Where an older lot is redeveloped, the new homes need fresh paving and drainage from scratch.
Soakwell volume for a Bedford lot
The City of Bayswater requires runoff to stay on the lot, with downpipes taken to soakwells of adequate combined volume. It publishes the volume as a multiplier.
Required soakwell volume in m3 equals impervious area in m2 times 0.0125, which holds 12.5 mm of rain on the property. Roofs, paving, driveways and patios are counted as impervious.
Source: City of Bayswater, Clearance of Subdivision Conditions Information Sheet.
Deep Bedford blocks often carry a lot of hard surface once a new driveway goes in. Take a home with 160 square metres of roof, a 75 square metre driveway and a 35 square metre rear patio: 270 square metres in all, and 3.4 cubic metres of storage. The ground helps. Bedford sits on the Bassendean Dunes, low hills of heavily leached white to grey sand, and groundwater is generally about 10 m below the surface, so soakwells here empty quickly and seldom meet the water table. The coast is around 13 km away, too far for salt to matter. For how other councils compare, see Perth soakwell requirements.
Wide frontages and the verge: what Bayswater allows
A wide Bedford frontage means a wide verge, and owners often ask how much of it they can pave. The City's Street Verges Policy deems brick paving on up to 30 per cent of the verge, excluding the driveway and path, to comply when it comes with trees able to shade the paved area. Going past 30 per cent requires the stormwater impact to be considered, and extra soakwells may win a concession. Synthetic lawn is not permitted on verges, and raised beds are limited to 0.35 m in height and must sit 0.5 m back from footpaths, crossovers and street trees.
Street trees stay. They cannot be removed without the City's written approval, and verge works close to them follow AS 4970-2009. For the crossover itself, approval comes first and the City's specifications apply. One standard crossover per lot is subsidised under the fees schedule, which covers swapping a bitumen crossover for concrete or brick paving; bitumen is not maintained or subsidised. Footpaths take priority over crossovers and are built in plain grey concrete, and the City may cut through decorative crossovers, exposed aggregate included, to build them.
Source: City of Bayswater, Street Verges Policy; Crossovers Policy.
The Grand Promenade and the suburbs beside Bedford
The Grand Promenade shops were completed by May 1952 to serve the new State Housing estate, and they were the first shops in Perth built with taxpayer money. They are a reminder of how quickly this part of Bedford was built, and why so many of its driveways reach the end of their life at around the same time. Around Bedford we also pave in Dianella, Morley, Embleton, Inglewood and Maylands. See areas we service for the rest.
