Calculator
Resin driveways cost per m², built up properly
The record
- Checked by
- Carl Winson
- Built from
- CIJC Working Rule Agreement
- Wage date
- 20 July 2026
- Grades
- craft rate and general operative
The working
- 1 × tradesperson at £16.40
- £16.40
- 1 × labourer at £13.18
- £13.18
- Gang wage, per hour
- £29.58
- + 35% on top of wages
- £39.93
- × 8 hours on the tools
- £319.46 a day
- Prep and primesweep, prime and mask the edges£319.46 ÷ 100 m² × 1.20 = £3.83/m²
- Resin-bound overlaymixed, trowelled and left to cure£319.46 ÷ 30 m² × 1.20 = £12.78/m²
Benchmark
£16.61/m² labour
CIJC rates · tradesperson £16.40/hr + labourer £13.18/hr · gang of 1+1 · 35% on top · overheads and profit 20%
Materials, scaffold and supervision are not included in this rate.
What’s in this?
- Employer's National Insurance - 15% above £5,000 a year
- Holiday pay - 12.07%
- Pension, auto-enrolment minimum - 3%
- CITB levy - 0.35% of payroll
- Sick pay, training and employer's liability insurance - the remainder
- At 0% this is a CIS subcontractor's labour price - National Insurance, holiday and pension are then theirs to carry, not the job's.
The location range is authored, not measured - our tender data says what was bought where, not what labour costs there.
Price a whole job with this ratePut in the job size and your lump sums - scaffold, plant, skip, and get the job total.
The minimum starts at a day of the gang, priced - £383.36 - because travel, unloading and setting up make a day the honest floor. Type your own, or 0 for none.
Put a job size in and the total appears here.
The weather window is a real number, not a caveat
Resin needs 5°C and rising, a dry surface, and no rain for the cure. Below 5°C the cure stretches past 48 hours; above about 35°C it goes off faster than you can trowel it. Damp or high humidity while it cures leaves a cloudy, weak surface - and the guidance most manufacturers give is to check the surface is at least 3°C above the dew point before starting.
Commercially, that means the workable season is roughly late spring to early autumn, plus whatever mild dry days the rest of the year gives you. A resin gang loses days no other trade loses, and a rate that assumes a clean run of dry weather is a rate that works in July and quietly fails in October.
The prep decides whether the job survives, and it is priced separately
Almost every resin failure is a base failure. Resin bound is a surfacing, not a structure - it takes the shape and the strength of what is underneath it, so a tired tarmac base with cracks gives you a resin surface with cracks in the same places, usually within a year.
That is why prep is its own operation on the card. Sweeping, priming and masking is fast, around 100 m² a day, but a base needing repair, or a new base laid before you start, is a different job entirely and belongs on the tarmac or concrete calculator with its own price.
Why the overlay is slow when the mixing is what limits you
30 m² a day for a two-person crew sounds low next to tarmac at 100. The reason is the batch: resin is mixed in a forced-action mixer, a batch at a time, and each batch has a working life measured in minutes. You cannot lay ahead of the mixer, and you cannot pause once a batch is out.
- Access. Barrowing from the mixer to the far end of a long driveway is the whole job on some sites.
- Edges and detail. Edging, gullies, manholes and a clean line against the house are hand work.
- Falls and drainage. Resin bound is porous, but the base still has to take the water somewhere sensible.
- Curing time before use. Around 24 hours before anyone walks on it and 48 to 72 before a car - which is a customer conversation, not a labour cost, but it is the one that causes arguments if it was not said up front.
Pricing a resin driveway properly
Put the area into the job section and the included operations spread across it. The resin and aggregate themselves are materials, outside this rate, and they are the larger part of the price on most resin jobs - this card gives you a defensible labour figure to build on rather than a total.
If you are pricing driveways every week, that is the work HubTrack does: your gang and your rates kept, applied job to job, so the price you quote on a Tuesday in April is built the same way as the one you quote in September.
Questions people ask
What temperature can you lay a resin driveway at?
A minimum of 5°C and rising, with most systems specified for an air temperature between 5°C and 35°C. Below 5°C the cure can take 48 hours or more; the surface should also be at least 3°C above the dew point, and relative humidity within roughly 30 to 85 per cent, or moisture interferes with the cure.
How long does a resin driveway take to cure?
Typically 24 hours before foot traffic and 48 to 72 hours before vehicles. In warm dry weather it can look ready within 6 to 12 hours, but installers still generally keep it untrafficked for a full day. Cold or humid conditions extend all of those times.
How much resin can a crew lay in a day?
Around 30 m² of resin-bound overlay a day for a two-person crew, with preparation and priming much faster at roughly 100 m². The overlay is limited by mixing: resin is done a batch at a time in a forced-action mixer and each batch has a short working life, so you cannot lay ahead of the mixer.
Does resin bound need a new base?
Not always, but the base decides the outcome. Resin bound is a surfacing that takes the shape and strength of what is underneath, so cracks in a tired tarmac base will reappear in the resin. Where a new or repaired base is needed it is a separate job with its own price - the tarmac or concrete calculator, not this one.
Why is resin more expensive per square metre than tarmac to lay?
Output, mostly. A tarmac gang runs about 100 m² a course in a day; a resin crew lays about 30 m² because the work is limited by batch mixing rather than by machinery. The materials also cost more, though they sit outside the labour rate on this calculator.
Where these figures come from
The wages are the national minimums agreed between employers and unions, republished each July. The costs on top of them are the statutory ones every employer actually pays. The outputs - how much a gang gets through in a day - are blended from published estimating guidance, and they are the part worth arguing with, which is why every one is a control you can move.
Other trades
- Bricklaying£35.68/m²
- Blockwork£23.84/m²
- Plastering£8.50/m²
- Rendering£38.34/m²
- Floor screed£2.83/m²
- Concreting£7.92/m²
- Tiling£17.71/m²
- Roofing£32.80/m²
- Block paving£25.56/m²
- Tarmac driveways£15.34/m²
- Painting£14.17/m²
- Stud walls£17.71/m²
- Patios£31.95/m²
- Repointing£26.57/m²
- Plasterboarding£12.39/m²
- Decking£31.88/m²
- Fencing£25.56/m²
- Turfing£3.42/m²
- Coving£7.08/m²
- Loft insulation£4.27/m²
- External wall insulation£38.34/m²
- Soft strip£8.54/m²
- Hand excavation£85.41/m²
- Shuttering£8.50/m²
- Mesh and rebar£2.56/m²
Pricing a job like these?
HubTrack is where small construction firms keep their compliance documents, their jobs and their evidence trail in one place - method statements and risk assessments prepared for you to check and sign off, and a record of who signed what and when. The same engine that reads the contract documents behind this page reads yours inside HubTrack.