Driveways 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.
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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.
What makes a drive or patio in Ashley need attention? 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 and not a rebuild, that is what we will quote.
The work
Drives built for a 1960s car, and what we do with them
Widening can mean a new kerb too. 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.
What these frontages need is often 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, not 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. A back patio in porcelain, stone or riven slab wants the same care, on a full mortar bed with a fall away from the house; for that, see patios in Ashley.
How it runs
Widening or relaying a bungalow drive
Thomas comes to look at the drive, checks the levels and where the water runs, and prices it himself. The written quote is itemised line by line: excavation, muck away, sub-base, edgings, surface and drainage. One company covers it all.
Plenty of sixties bungalows in Ashley have a single width apron that owners want widened for two cars. The plots are wide, so a small digger and a skip can usually sit on your own ground. Neighbours are told when deliveries are coming, the road is swept each evening, and spoil leaves with us. If an old soakaway, a service pipe or soft ground turns up, Thomas photographs it and prices it for you before the dig goes on.
Paving the front garden is permitted development provided the water stays on your land. Over five square metres of new hard surface has to be permeable or drain to a border or soakaway, and the front garden rules are on the Planning Portal. Widening the opening onto the road means applying for a dropped kerb through Hampshire County Council as highway authority, so start it early. Ashley has no conservation area and five listed entries, so for nearly every address there is nothing else to apply for, though the other permissions you may need are worth a look if yours is one of them.
Cost
Why widening a drive costs more than the extra width
We do not quote a rate per square metre. The layers you never see decide whether the surface is still flat in years to come.
The starting point. Some bungalows in Ashley still have the original single apron with a lawn either side. Some houses sit behind a gate, and on a corner plot the drive runs past the front door. Each changes how much comes out and where the machine goes.
Widening. A wider drive means more edging, more spoil and often a wider crossing on the pavement, which is a separate application and a separate cost.
The ground. Ashley is on cohesive clay that shrinks and swells. The excavation has to go down to a firm formation, with enough sub-base on top to carry cars. Clay also drains slowly, so a soakaway may struggle and the water may need a channel to an outfall.
The surface. Each surface, from block paving and tarmac to resin bound or gravel, has its own edging detail and build-up. Edgings haunched in concrete stay put, and loose ones let the blocks creep.
Check any other quote for the depth of the dig, the route the rainwater takes, and whether the edgings are haunched.
If it is urgent
A sunken bay or a gully that has stopped draining
A drive is rarely urgent, but a lifted slab on the path, a sunken bay by the front door, or a gully that has stopped taking water can get worse quickly. Someone trips, or rain starts sitting against the house wall on clay that then moves.
Mark the trip, and clear the gully grate if you can do it safely. The first job is to remove the hazard and get the water away, and the permanent work is priced once the ground can be opened. Our scheduled groundwork is Monday to Friday, 8am to 6pm. For a hazard, phone us rather than filling in the form. If nobody picks up, we will ring you back as soon as we are able.
Worth knowing
Getting a single storey house level, and keeping it level
Something like four in ten homes in Ashley 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
The company laying your drive in Ashley
Our base is in Boscombe, on the east side of Bournemouth, 8.9 miles from Ashley. We lay drives across Ashley and the New Milton side of the forest, through Bashley, Barton on Sea and the BH25 postcodes, with New Forest District Council as planning authority.
Thomas Hannen measures the drive and prices it himself, and the company is his: Bournemouth Roofing & Building Ltd, registered in England and Wales, company number 15471719. A verified customer's Checkatrade score for us is 10 out of 10. Both the site visit and the written quote, itemised, come free. Before you book a visit in Ashley, you can read our customers' Google reviews, word for word, on our reviews page.
Planning at a glance
Do you need planning permission in Ashley?
Most repairs in Ashley need no application at all. What decides whether a change to the outside of your house does is who the council is, whether a conservation area or a listing applies, and whether the place sits in a protected landscape.
| Question | In Ashley |
|---|---|
| Who decides | New Forest District Council is the planning authority for Ashley. The National Park boundary runs close by, and the Park's property map shows which side an address falls. |
| Conservation area | None covers Ashley, so a like-for-like repair is ordinary maintenance. |
| Listed buildings | Yes, there are listed buildings in and around Ashley. If yours is one, work can need listed building consent. |
| Protected landscape | No National Park or National Landscape covers Ashley. |
Questions
Questions about driveways in Ashley
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.
Nearby, and next door
Driveways near Ashley
Nearby places we also cover for driveways, with straight-line distances from Ashley, and the other trades we offer in Ashley itself.
Driveways nearby
Our other trades in Ashley
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Driveway planning permission and where water goes Sunken or ponding driveway: base or drainage Indian sandstone vs porcelain paving: an honest comparisonEverything we do in New Milton Driveways, all areas Every area we cover
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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.