Driveways in Blandford Forum

Courtyards and yards behind the terraces. Half of the old town is long, narrow plots reached through a passage or an archway, and that rules out a machine before we start.

The dig comes out by barrow and tonne bag to a grab lorry or a skip on the nearest legal standing, the new stone goes back in the same way, and floors and hallways get boarded and sheeted where the route runs through the house. It is slower, and we price it as slower rather than pretending otherwise. Small units suit these spaces: setts, clay pavers, brick on edge and small format natural stone all turn a corner and take a cut without looking wrong.

Nearly a fifth of the housing in Blandford Forum is pre-1919, and plenty of those houses have no front garden at all, so the job is a threshold, a step and a strip of paving rather than a drive. The critical dimension is the level. Georgian and Victorian brick was built without a damp proof course, and every time somebody has laid a new surface over the old one the ground has climbed nearer the internal floor. We take it back down, keep a fall away from the wall and leave a narrow gravel margin or a slot channel where there is room, so the brickwork can still dry out.

Shared parking areas and back lanes. These fail at the drainage first and the surface second: a gully silted up, a fall flattened out by successive patching, then ponding, then potholes where the standing water has softened the base. The repair that lasts is to reinstate the falls and the outfall, dig out the failed areas to firm formation over a geotextile membrane, rebuild and compact the sub-base and finish in tarmac or heavy duty block paving. Patching over a wet base is money you will spend again. Away from the centre the housing is ordinary post war and later, with concrete and block drives from the 1970s and 1980s now cracking and sunken in the wheel tracks, and those are straightforward jobs with room to work: lift, dig, rebuild the base to a proper depth, relay the good blocks with kiln dried sand in the joints, or take the concrete out and start again in permeable paving or resin.

Gardens that step down want the levels set off the house and the retaining built rather than banked. Porcelain on a primed full mortar bed, sawn stone pointed by hand, or riven paving where you want it to look older than it is. For a garden terrace on its own, see patios in Blandford Forum. There are over two hundred listed entries in the town, so on a good many addresses consent comes before the work rather than after, and where a boundary wall is involved boundary walls have their own rules, which we would sooner check at the quote than halfway through.

You pay mostly for what is under the surface. Lorry or barrow. Almost nothing in the old town can be reached by lorry, so materials arrive by barrow and the day stretches. On the estates, a lorry backs onto the drive and the same work is quicker.

How deep. The dig is set by the weight that will stand on it and by the ground. Old concrete, tarmac or a buried path is broken out and carted off by the load.

The sub-base. Well compacted and deep enough, it is what prevents ruts and sunken bays, and it is the first thing a cheap quote thins out.

Water. Permeable blocks, gravel on a grid, or a channel draining to a soakaway each cost differently, and the choice decides whether planning is needed.

Levels. Where a drive slopes towards the house or the garage, a channel drain across the bottom is needed, and that is priced as its own item.

The crossing. A new dropped kerb is applied for through Dorset Council and paid to them, separately from us.

Ask rival quotes how deep they dig and what sub-base goes in, where the water will go, and who carts the spoil.

Driveways take us 16.8 miles from our Boscombe base up to Blandford Forum, and out across DT11 to Bryanston, Stourpaine, Spetisbury and the Winterborne villages. Dorset Council is both the planning and the highway authority. The company is Bournemouth Roofing & Building Ltd, registered in England and Wales, company number 15471719. Before you book a visit in Blandford Forum, you can read our customers' Google reviews, word for word, on our reviews page.

It belongs to Thomas Hannen, who comes out to check your levels and drainage and prices the drive in person. A verified customer rated the firm 10 out of 10 on Checkatrade. Visiting and quoting are free, and the quote comes in writing, itemised stage by stage.

Most repairs in Blandford Forum 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.