Driveways and patios in Ashley
Wider drives, relaid block paving and rebuilt patios around Ashley and New Milton. We come out, take levels, and put a written itemised price in front of you.
The site visit is free and so is the written itemised quote. Thomas Hannen prices every job himself.
Width and drainage are the problem on an Ashley drive far more often than the surface is. Most of them were built for one small car and one narrow garage. Widening and rebuilding properly costs less than doing it twice.
People ring us here for one of three reasons. There is nowhere to put the second car without one wheel on the grass. The old concrete has cracked along the joints and lifted at one corner. Or the back patio has sunk towards the house and the water now sits against the wall instead of running off it.
None of those are guesswork jobs. We come out, take levels, look at what the existing surface is sitting on and check where your rainwater currently goes. You get a survey of what is there, then a written price for the work that fixes it. If the honest answer is a relay rather than a rebuild, that is what we will quote.
The work
Drives built for a 1960s car, and what we do with them
Widening, and the kerb. Ashley filled up with single storey housing through the late fifties and sixties, and the frontages were laid out for one narrow car and a garage to match. The commonest job here is not a new surface at all, it is taking the drive out to the full width of the plot so two cars sit side by side without one of them living on the verge. That means new edgings haunched in concrete against the lawn, sometimes a wider crossing over the footway, and an honest conversation about how much front garden you want to lose.
The original concrete is the next question. A lot of the aprons and wheel strips here are still the first ones laid: cracked along the bays, lifted where a root has got under, worn open at the surface so they hold staining. If a slab is still flat and well drained it will take resin bound gravel, which is why resin suits these narrow frontages, no dig and no muck away. If it has moved, resin cracks straight through in the same line within a year or two, and we say so before you spend the money rather than after.
The nineties block paving is the other half of the work. Those drives are the ones now sunken in two neat tracks with weed in the joints, and that is the sub-base compressing under a heavier modern car rather than the blocks failing. We lift them, check the formation, relay to depth on sharp sand, reset the edge restraint and brush in kiln dried sand.
Where a bungalow puts its rainwater. Over four in ten homes here are bungalows, and a single storey house covers a lot of ground for its floor area. All of that roof drains into gutters at about knee height, usually straight onto the drive. We deal with it as part of the job: a channel drain across the garage threshold, a gully that actually takes water, or a permeable build up that holds the rain and lets it away slowly. It is the difference between a drive that lasts and one that ices over by the front door every January. Back patios get rebuilt on a compacted base and a full mortar bed with a fall away from the house, in porcelain, stone or riven slab, and the joints pointed rather than brushed with dry sand.
How it runs
From your call to a written price
The quote is itemised, line by line. Paving the front garden is permitted development provided the water stays on your own land. Over five square metres of new hard surface has to be permeable or drain to a border or soakaway rather than run into the road, and the front garden rules are set out on the Planning Portal. For a new opening onto the highway, dropping a kerb is its own application through the highway authority, so start it early. Ashley has no conservation area and five listed entries, so for nearly every address there is nothing to apply for, though the other permissions you may need is worth a look if yours is one of them.
Cost
What decides the price of a driveway
Getting to it. A sixties bungalow with a single width apron, a detached house behind a five bar gate and a semi on a corner with the drive running past the door are three jobs before anybody lifts a slab. Widening is the cost peculiar to Ashley: a wider drive means more edging, more spoil and often a wider crossing. The sub base you never see decides whether the surface is flat in ten years, so ask any quote the dig depth, where the surface water ends up, whether the edgings are haunched and who takes the spoil.
If it is urgent
A trip hazard, or a drive that floods
Ring rather than fill in the form if a slab has lifted across a path or a bay has sunk by a doorway. A gully that has stopped taking water is the same: somebody falls, or the water starts working at the house. We make it safe and get the water moving first, then price the permanent work once the ground can be opened. Ashley is about eleven miles from us.
Worth knowing
Getting a single storey house level, and keeping it level
Something like four in ten homes here are bungalows, and that changes what a good drive and a good patio look like. In a house you can accept a step at the front door because everybody uses the stairs anyway.
In a bungalow the whole household lives on one floor, and the two or three inches between the drive and the threshold end up being the only step in the property. It is the one people trip on with shopping in both hands, and the one that stops a wheelchair, a frame or a pushchair getting in at all.
You can usually design that out, and it costs very little extra if it is planned before the dig rather than after. The trick is to bring the surface up to within a whisker of the threshold and get rid of the water sideways instead of downwards, with a shallow crossfall away from the wall and a channel drain across the door. What you must not do is simply raise the paving to meet the door, because that bridges the damp proof course and puts wet into the wall.
Keep the finished level at least two brick courses below the damp proof course, or drain the gap properly with a threshold channel where the level has to be flush, and you get level access without buying a damp problem. It is worth saying out loud on the site visit if anyone in the house is finding steps hard, because it changes the falls and the drainage, not the price of the surface.
Who you are dealing with
A local firm you can check
We cover Ashley and the rest of the New Milton side of the forest, out through Bashley, Barton on Sea and the BH25 postcodes, from Bournemouth. Bournemouth Roofing & Building Ltd, registered in England and Wales, company number 15471719, which you can look up in a minute. Thomas Hannen's business, and he is the one who comes out to price the job, not a salesman. A verified customer's 10 out of 10 on Checkatrade. The visit and the written quote are both free.
Questions
Ashley questions we get asked
Ashley is bungalow country. How does that change a drive?
A bungalow spreads its floor area over one storey, and 41.8% of the housing in Ashley is bungalows, so the building sits wide on the plot and the frontage left over is shallow. That usually means a drive doubling as a turning area, because reversing out onto the road is the alternative. We set the parking bays first, then the turn, then decide where the edge restraint has to be strongest.
Our drive dates from the early sixties. Is it saveable?
Sometimes. Just under half the housing in Ashley went up between 1945 and 1982, and drives of that age were often laid straight onto whatever was there with no proper sub base. If the concrete is cracked in two or three places but sits solid underfoot, it can be broken out in sections and made good. If it rocks when you walk on it, the ground beneath has moved and laying anything new over the top repeats the fault.
Which part of a new patio gives out first here?
The edges and the openings, not the middle. The most exposed elevation in Ashley faces south west, so driven rain arrives sideways and works at the joint along the house, the step into the back door and the free edge where paving meets lawn. A slab field rarely fails in its centre. We haunch that exposed edge properly, keep the perimeter joint wide enough to move, and fall the whole thing away from the wall.
Who agrees a dropped kerb, New Forest or highways?
Two different bodies. Planning for the paving sits with New Forest as the local planning authority for Ashley, while the crossing over the footway is a highway matter applied for separately. The application goes in the householder's name rather than ours, so we hand you the drawing and the construction detail to submit, then build to whatever specification comes back. Starting the drive before that consent lands is how people end up digging it up again.
What happens to the muck once the old drive is up?
It goes out on a grab lorry the same day where the road allows it, and where it does not we stack it on boards in one spot and clear it in a single run at the end. Ashley frontages are open and mostly unfenced, so the verge and the lawn get track mats before anything heavy crosses them. Turf and topsoil are kept separate, because they are worth putting back round the borders.
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Get a price for your Ashley drive or patio
Tell us what you are trying to fit on the front, or what has sunk at the back, and we will come out and price it properly in writing.