Concreters in Maryland, 2287
Maryland lies about fourteen kilometres west-north-west of the Newcastle CBD, between Wallsend, Fletcher, Shortland and Hexham. Maryland Drive is the spine, carrying the shopping centre and Glendore Public School, and Minmi Road, which council is widening to two lanes each way from Maryland Drive, links the suburb to Wallsend. All of this was farmland, a grant to the Brooks family, until housing began to arrive in the 1970s. Glendore school opened in 1996, and at the 2021 census nine in ten occupied dwellings were separate houses. For a concreter that means one owner, one driveway and one crossing per job, and a great deal of first-generation concrete nearing the end of its service.
Creeks, falls and the subsidence line
Maryland Creek and Wentworth Creek are among the channels that drain to Hexham Swamp, and City of Newcastle’s flood study for that catchment is unfinished. On lower blocks the sound habit is to decide falls and the discharge point before any formwork is set. On mine subsidence, Maryland parts company with its neighbours: the state map shows most of the suburb outside the Newcastle district, so only a property on the Fletcher or Wallsend edge is worth checking.
What a suburb of detached houses asks for
Homes built from the 1970s through the 1990s have given their first driveways a long working life. Removal and replacement of a cracked or sunken slab is the core job, and the new concrete driveway is commonly poured wider than the old one so a second car or a trailer has somewhere to stand. Behind the house, a suburb where close to half the homes carry a mortgage keeps adding to what it has: a covered patio or alfresco slab, a shed or garage slab, and paths joining both to the side gate. With so few townhouses and almost no flats, the choice of finish and extent nearly always rests with a single household.
Choosing a finish
Houses of this era take exposed aggregate comfortably across the frontage, a coloured mix is the quieter way to lift a tired street face, and plain broom finish stays the workhorse for side paths and shed floors. At the kerb, City of Newcastle’s drawing asks for plain broom finished concrete, will only consider colour or exposed stone case by case, and rules out stamped patterns altogether.
Budgeting a Maryland job
Work from the back fence forward and the published rates, each per square metre supplied and laid, read like this: shed and garage slabs $110 to $150, patios and alfresco slabs $100 to $180, paths $90 to $130, and a driveway $95 to $185, the upper part of which, $130 to $185, is exposed aggregate. Because so much Maryland work starts with an old slab coming out, the allowance of about $35 for breaking out and carting away is the line that most often moves a total here. Before ringing anyone, spend ten minutes with the calculator and the cost guide; before accepting anything, spend ten more with the Section 138 guide and the specification.
Council and the crossing
Maryland sits in the City of Newcastle area. What that council asks of a driveway crossing is set out on the areas page and, step by step, in the Section 138 guide.