Driveways in Beacon Hill
Drives and patios that stay flat, because the dig, the sub-base and the drainage are done before the surface goes anywhere near them.
The site visit is free and so is the written itemised quote. Thomas Hannen prices every job himself.
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The ground underneath is what gives way when a Beacon Hill drive dips where you park. The blocks or the concrete on top are almost never the problem. So the ground is the part we dig into and the part we price.
Paving in Beacon Hill shows it needs work through standing water, sunken tracks and a patio nobody uses. Water standing in the same spot for two days after rain. Two sunken wheel tracks where the car sits, with the blocks tipping in towards them. Or a patio nobody uses any more because it is uneven, green and one slab rocks every time you walk on it.
We come out, look at the falls and the levels, and lift a corner or dig a small hole so we can see what is under there. That takes half an hour and it settles the argument, because the same symptom can be a morning's work or a full rebuild and you cannot tell from a photograph. You get told which, and why, before anyone talks about a price.
The work
Old concrete, sunken blocks and raised patios
Worn out concrete drives. A poured concrete drive has no give in it, and on wet sandy ground the base under the slab softens every winter.
In time they crack along the bay joints, lift where a conifer root has got under them, and carry a spread of staining by the garage door. The honest choice is between breaking it out, digging down and starting again, which means a machine and a real disposal cost, or, where the slab is still flat and firmly bedded, repairing the cracks and laying resin bound gravel over it. We will talk you out of the second if the concrete moves underfoot.
Block paving that has rutted is a base problem every time. We lift the blocks, keep what is worth keeping, take the failed material out to proper formation, put a geotextile membrane down and rebuild the sub-base in compacted layers. Where a drive has only lost its sand and grown weed in the joints, that is a clean and a re-sand rather than a rebuild, and we will say so.
Low thresholds, and the second car. Where patio doors open straight onto the garden, the damp proof course may sit only two courses above the ground. Every time a new patio has gone on top of the old one the level has crept up, and eventually the wall inside goes damp. The fix is to bring the finished level back down, or run a channel drain and a gravel margin across the threshold. For the patio itself, see patios in Beacon Hill. Where a house has only a single width drive, taking in a strip of lawn is the other thing to plan, and the part people miss is the edge: paving pushed against soft ground creeps out within a couple of winters unless the new side is kerbed and haunched.
How it runs
Digging out and laying a drive on BH16 sand
Thomas comes and looks at the drive himself. He checks the levels, where rain runs off now, what lies under the surface if he can lift a corner, and how a lorry and a small digger will reach the front. His quote prices digging out and carting it away, the stone sub-base, kerbs and edgings, your chosen surface, and the drainage, each as its own item.
Your drive is dug, laid and finished under one written quote. Deliveries are booked for when there is space to drop them, and the road and pavement are swept at the end of each day. Spoil goes in grab lorries or skips we arrange, never left in a heap. If the dig finds an old soakaway, a cracked drain or soft ground under the old concrete, you get a photograph and a price before any extra work is done.
A front drive stays permitted development if the rainwater stays on your land, through a permeable surface or a fall onto a border or a gravel margin. Hard surfacing over five square metres that drains onto the road needs planning permission, as the front garden rules explain. This sandy ground is naturally wet in winter, so how the water is handled is planned on site. Dorset Council is the planning and highway authority here, and a dropped kerb is a separate application that you make to them.
Cost
Excavation, sub-base and drainage decide a driveway price
We price a drive on what goes under it, not on a rate per square metre. How much comes out. Breaking out old concrete or tarmac and digging down to firm ground fills lorries. On the wet sandy ground around Beacon Hill we dig until we reach firm, undisturbed ground, and that depth is decided on site rather than assumed.
The sub-base. Crushed stone, compacted in layers, is what stops ruts. Wet sand pumps up into loose stone, so a geotextile membrane goes under the sub-base to stop the two mixing.
Where the water goes. In winter this ground can hold water rather than letting it soak away. A permeable surface may need a drain in the sub-base, and a solid one needs channel drains and a proper outfall. Get this wrong and water sits against your walls, soaking the footings and the damp proof course all winter.
Access. An open front where a lorry can back on costs less to build than a job where every barrow goes through a side gate.
The surface. Block paving on sharp sand, tarmac, resin bound and gravel each need different edgings and bedding.
Ask any other quote how deep the dig is, what sub-base and how thick, where the surface water goes, and who takes the spoil away.
If it is urgent
A sunken bay or a gully that has stopped draining
A drive is rarely a true emergency, but some things should not wait. A lifted block by the front door is a trip, a sunken bay holds a puddle that freezes, and a blocked gully can send water against the house wall, which on this wet ground is the one that matters most.
Photograph any ponding while the water is there, then ring; do not wait on the form. We make the trip safe on the first visit and get the water moving, then price the permanent repair. Scheduled work runs Monday to Friday, 8am to 6pm. For something urgent, phone us; a missed call gets returned as soon as we can.
The one local thing
No conservation area, so the look of the drive is yours to pick
Beacon Hill has no conservation area over it, and that is worth knowing before you start ringing round. Unless your own house is on the Historic England list, which takes a minute to check, nobody has a say in what your drive looks like. No consent for changing from concrete to block paving, no argument about whether grey porcelain is in keeping with anything, no material you have to match. The look of it is your decision.
So the decision moves onto ground and use instead, and the ground is the awkward part. Water is slow to get away in this pocket, which is exactly the condition where a soakaway that looked fine on paper fills up in January and stays full. That is why we dig a hole and fill it before we design the drainage rather than after, which is the test Approved Document H expects.
Where the ground will not take it, the water needs a positive outfall to a surface water drain instead, or the surface itself has to be the drainage: permeable block paving over an open graded sub-base holds the rain and lets it go slowly, which is the whole idea behind SuDS. You are free to choose the surface. You are not free to choose the ground, so let the ground pick first.
Who you are dealing with
The Boscombe firm that lays drives out here
Beacon Hill is 9.8 miles from our Boscombe base, in BH16 and the parish of Sturminster Marshall, and we lay drives here and in Upton, Lytchett Matravers and Corfe Mullen. Dorset Council is the planning and highway authority.
The company you would contract with is Bournemouth Roofing & Building Ltd, registered in England and Wales as number 15471719. Thomas Hannen owns it, and he comes out to measure the drive and price it in person. A verified customer on Checkatrade gave us 10 out of 10. Neither the visit nor the itemised written quote costs you anything. Before you book a visit in Beacon Hill, you can read our customers' Google reviews, word for word, on our reviews page.
Planning at a glance
Do you need planning permission in Beacon Hill?
Most repairs in Beacon Hill 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 Beacon Hill |
|---|---|
| Who decides | Dorset Council is the planning authority for Beacon Hill. Dorset Council's heritage pages set out what it controls. |
| Conservation area | None covers Beacon Hill, so a like-for-like repair is ordinary maintenance. |
| Listed buildings | Nothing in Beacon Hill is on the statutory list, so listed building consent does not come into it. |
| Protected landscape | No National Park or National Landscape covers Beacon Hill. |
Questions
Questions about driveways in Beacon Hill
Beacon Hill has no conservation area. Can we pave what we like?
Within the ordinary rules, largely yes. There is no conservation area at Beacon Hill, so unless your house itself is listed, Dorset Council will not be arguing about the colour of a block or the finish of a slab. What still bites is surface water. Hard surface a front garden and send the run off onto the road rather than into your own ground and that needs an application. A permeable build keeps the job out of the planning system.
Our garden lies wet until March. Will a soakaway empty?
Not necessarily, and it is worth settling before stone is ordered. The ground around Beacon Hill is naturally wet, so infiltration gets proved, not assumed: a hole in the right spot, filled twice, with the drop timed. Slow ground pushes the design towards a positive outfall, or towards a storage layer under the drive with a restricted outlet. That changes what the job costs, which is why it belongs on the quote and not in a conversation halfway through.
Why does the drive keep cracking along the same line?
Usually because the base under it is thin and the ground under Beacon Hill is wet sand. Water sits in the base through winter, fine material washes out, the support drops, and a rigid concrete or mortar bedded surface breaks along its weakest line. Flexible surfaces ride it out because the joints move. If a drive here keeps failing in the same place, the answer is a jointed surface over a deeper stone base, not another repair.
Only the wheel tracks have sunk. Can that be patched?
Sometimes, and the test is what sits under them. We lift a square metre in the rut and look at the bedding sand and the stone below. If the stone is intact and the sand has simply washed into a soft spot, that area gets rebuilt and relaid and the rest of the Beacon Hill drive is left alone. If the stone has punched down into wet ground, patching buys a year. The decision is made with the ground open.
Is gravel a sensible surface on wet ground?
It copes better than most, because there is no rigid surface to crack. On soft, wet Beacon Hill ground a loose surface simply resettles where a slab would crack. The problem is containment: with no proper edge and no stable bound base underneath, stone migrates into the road and ruts where the wheels run. Bound gravel or a cellular grid over a full base keeps the advantage without the sweeping up.
Nearby, and next door
Driveways near Beacon Hill
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Get a written price for your drive or patio
A free site visit in Beacon Hill, a proper look at the ground, and an itemised quote you can compare against anyone else's.