The complete guide
Gravel Grid Buyer's Guide, How To Stop Loose Stone Moving For Good
The problem with loose gravel
Gravel is one of the cheapest and best looking surfaces you can put down. It drains, it crunches nicely underfoot, it suits almost any house, and it costs a fraction of what block paving does. The trouble is that gravel doesn't stay where you put it.
Give it a few months of car tyres and you get a ridge down the middle and two shallow trenches where the wheels run. Feet drag it into the house. Rain shifts it downhill. The membrane starts showing through in patches, and the whole thing looks tired long before it should. Then you buy another bulk bag, rake it out, and start the cycle again.
A gravel grid breaks that cycle. Rather than trying to hold one loose layer in place with edging alone, it divides the surface into hundreds of small compartments. Stone in a compartment has nowhere to go. It can settle and it can compact slightly, but it can't travel.
How a gravel grid actually works
Each panel here's a 50cm square, 4cm deep, split into 49 pockets. Lay the panels, fill the pockets, and the plastic vanishes under the stone. What you see afterwards is gravel. What's doing the work underneath is a rigid frame.
Two things happen when a vehicle drives over a filled grid. First, the load is spread across the panel and out into the panels locked either side of it, instead of pressing down at one small contact point. Second, the stone in each pocket is held by four walls, so it can't squirt sideways out from under the tyre. Those two effects together are what stops rutting.
The rated weight capacity for this product is a maximum of 25 tons. In practical terms that's far more than a family car needs. It matters when a delivery lorry, a skip truck or a builder's van has to come onto the drive, which is usually the moment an unprotected gravel surface gives up.
The panels connect with jigsaw-style edges. You line one up against the last, push, and it snaps home. There are no clips, screws or connectors to lose, and nothing to assemble on the kitchen table first. That's a small detail that saves a surprising amount of time when you're laying twenty or thirty square metres.
Who this suits
The obvious use is a driveway. If you've loose stone at the front of the house and you're fed up with raking it, driveway gravel grids are the direct fix.
It's far from the only use, though. A shed base grid gives you a firm, level, free-draining platform without mixing concrete or hiring a mixer. Greenhouses, log stores, bin stores and bike sheds all sit happily on a filled grid. Garden paths are another good candidate, especially the ones that turn to mush every winter. Caravan and trailer hardstandings work well too, since the load is spread rather than concentrated.
It also suits people who care about drainage. Water goes straight down through the open cells into the base below rather than running off towards a wall or a drain. If you live somewhere that gets sudden heavy rain, a permeable driveway grid is often a more sensible choice than sealing the whole area over.
Getting the base right
This is the part people rush, and it's the part that decides whether the finished job lasts.
For a driveway, dig out to a workable depth, put in a compacted sub-base of crushed stone, then a thin blinding layer of sharp sand or grit to give you a flat bed. Lay a weed membrane over that. Then the panels go on top. Compaction matters more than depth. A well compacted 100mm base will outlast a loose 200mm one.
For a light path or a shed base, you can be less heavy handed. Level the ground, firm it, lay a membrane and go. The grid doesn't need a concrete slab under it, which is rather the point.
Get your levels right before the panels go down. A grid will hold gravel steady, but it'll hold it steady at whatever level you set it at, dips included. Use a straight edge and a spirit level as you work across the area.
Choosing your gravel
Angular stone beats rounded stone here. Angular pieces have flat faces that lock against each other, so they knit together and sit still. Rounded pea shingle rolls, and rolling is exactly what you're trying to stop.
Size matters too. Something in the 10mm to 20mm range fills the pockets neatly. Go too fine and the stone washes down through the structure. Go too large and the pieces bridge across the pockets instead of filling them, leaving gaps.
Fill the cells to the top, then add a shallow scattering over the surface. That top layer hides the plastic completely and gives you the finish you actually wanted when you decided on gravel in the first place.
Working out quantities
Each panel covers a 50cm square. Measure your area in metres, multiply length by width, and work out how many panels that needs. Then add a few extra for cuts. Any area with a curve, a manhole cover or an awkward corner will eat one or two panels that end up half used.
If you're covering a large drive, order everything at once rather than in stages. It saves on delivery and it means you aren't waiting mid-job with a bare sub-base exposed to the weather.
Cutting and edges
Panels cut cleanly with a handsaw or a jigsaw. Support the panel on a firm surface so it doesn't flex while you cut, and mark your line properly before you start. Cutting around a drain cover or a curved bed is fiddly but not difficult.
Think about edge restraint on any open sides. Timber board, a kerb line, or a firm border keeps the outer panels from drifting and gives you a clean edge to work to. Where the grid meets a wall or a step you usually don't need anything extra.
Care and upkeep
There's not much to do, which is the appeal. Rake the surface now and then to even out any stone that has been kicked about. When the gravel level drops below the top of the grid, tip in a fresh bag and rake it through. Weeds that appear can be pulled by hand or hoed off, and a membrane underneath keeps that job small.
Hose off mud when the drive gets messy. Avoid dragging sharp metal blades across the panels when you're clearing, since the plastic will scar even though it won't fail.
The short version
Loose gravel moves. A gravel grid stops it. This pack gives you 16 black plastic panels, each 50cm x 50cm x 4cm with 49 pockets, that snap together without tools and carry a stated maximum weight of 25 tons.
Prepare a compacted, level base, put a membrane down, click the panels together, fill with angular stone and top it off. After that, the job is done. You get the look of gravel with none of the raking, and a surface that still looks right in three years rather than three months.