Driveways and patios in Breamore
Drives, yards, paths and patios in Breamore and the SP6 addresses along the Avon valley, built from the bottom up.
The site visit is free and so is the written itemised quote. Thomas Hannen prices every job himself.
On ground as wet as Breamore's, the thing that decides your drive is not which surface you like. It is where the water is going to go once the surface is down, and that gets settled with a hole in the ground before anything is priced.
Most calls from here start the same way. The gravel has all washed to the bottom of the slope and the top of the drive is bare. The turning area by the barn has gone to mud again and a car has sat in a rut all winter. Or the stone patio is green, slippery and holding water in the dips, and somebody nearly went over on it.
None of that is fixed by more gravel or a stronger clean. It is fixed by getting the water off the surface and away, and by building something underneath that will not turn to porridge every February. We come out, look at the fall of the land and the ground itself, and tell you what will actually last on your plot. The site visit and the written quote both cost nothing.
The work
Drives, yards and paths in a village of old buildings
Gravel drives that stay where they are put. Most of what we do here is loose stone, because it suits the cottages and the farm entrances and it is what the village already looks like. Done properly it is a dug formation, a geotextile membrane, a compacted sub-base and only then the gravel, held at the sides by a haunched kerb or a timber border. On any slope we set the stone into a cellular grid so it cannot travel, because loose gravel on a fall ends up in the road and then it is your neighbour's problem as well as yours.
Where a loose surface will not do, resin bound over a sound base gives the same look with a firm top, which matters if somebody at the address uses a stick or a wheelchair. Permeable block paving is the other option and drains through itself rather than shedding to one corner. Both want more depth here than they would on free draining ground, which is a cost we would rather explain at the quote than discover halfway through. A yard that takes a horsebox or a delivery lorry is different again: deeper excavation, a coarser sub-base, and concrete or heavy duty tarmac where the turning happens.
Thresholds on old buildings. The cottages here have had ground built up against them for a very long time, and the internal floor is often lower than the garden, so laying a new patio straight up to the wall is the quickest way to make a dry room damp. Natural stone and porcelain both go on a full mortar bed with a fall away from the building, the level kept down off the damp proof course where there is one, and where the ground gives no room we drop a step, run a channel drain along the wall, or leave a drained gravel margin against the brickwork. With sixty three listed entries in the parish and a conservation area over the village, what a frontage is finished in is part of the question rather than a free choice.
Relaying a sunken bay, repointing a stone patio where the mortar has blown, a re-sand on block paving that has emptied its joints, clearing a gully, cutting in a land drain and finding an outfall for it are all jobs worth doing on their own. Spoil goes on its own line: a grab lorry where one can get in, a skip where it cannot, and the disposal priced rather than buried in a rate.
How it runs
From your call to a written price
Breamore is a conservation area and the parish carries more than sixty listed entries, so what a frontage looks like matters more here than the paving rules do. The paving rule itself is simple: over five square metres, a hard impermeable front surface draining onto the road needs planning permission, while permeable paving or a soakaway on your land keeps it permitted development, and Planning Portal sets out where that line falls. A wall, a pier or a gate at the entrance is a separate question, and Planning Portal guidance on walls and gates covers it. If the building is listed, consent comes before the work. Planning is New Forest District Council, and anything on the highway is Hampshire County Council.
Cost
What decides the price of a driveway
A thatched cottage on the street with a gate you can only get a barrow through, a house set back behind a long gravel drive, and a farm entrance a lorry can turn inside are three different jobs before anything is dug. We are seventeen miles out, so deliveries are planned rather than dropped in. Below the surface it is dig depth, ground conditions and how much muck goes away that move the price, along with where the water is allowed to go. Ask a quote those four things and the gap between two prices usually explains itself.
If it is urgent
A trip hazard, or a drive that floods
Breamore is one of our longer runs at about seventeen miles, so ring rather than wait and we will give you a straight answer about when we can get there. The ones not to sit on are a flag lifted at a doorway, a bay that has sunk, and a gully that has stopped taking water and is putting it against an old wall. Making it safe comes first.
Worth knowing
Wet ground here, and why the soakaway question comes first
The valley ground through Breamore holds water. It sits wet for months rather than days, and the water table can be close enough to the surface that a hole dug in January fills up while you are looking at it. That has a direct effect on paving. A sub-base built on saturated ground never gets properly compacted, and a surface laid on it settles unevenly within a year or two, which is where most of the sunken bays and ponding we get called to actually come from.
It also decides the drainage. Soaking rainwater away into the ground is the default answer everywhere else and it is not the default answer here. Approved Document H expects a soakaway to be shown to work with a percolation test, and on ground like this it often fails one.
When it does, the water needs a positive outfall instead: a surface water drain, a ditch or a watercourse, with whoever owns it agreeing first. Sometimes the honest answer is a smaller area of hard surface and a wider gravel margin, so there is less water to move in the first place. We will tell you that on the visit, because finding it out after the dig is open costs everybody money.
Who you are dealing with
A local firm you can check
We cover Breamore and the SP6 addresses up and down the valley, out through Woodgreen, Hale and Rockbourne towards Fordingbridge, with New Forest District Council for planning and Hampshire County Council for the highway. 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
Breamore questions we get asked
Does the Breamore conservation area control what surface we lay?
Appearance is what it controls, so the material matters more than the area covered. Breamore is a conservation area, and replacing a gravel or stone surface with the same thing counts as maintenance, while switching to a modern block or a coloured resin is a change the local planning authority can ask to see first. None of it stops you having a usable drive. It steers you towards a covering that sits with what is already there.
63 entries are listed in Breamore. Does that reach a track?
It reaches the buildings and their curtilage, not the open land between them. Breamore has 63 listed entries, among them a barn 30 metres south of Home Farm Cottages, so paving running up against an old building can need listed building consent alongside the conservation area question. A track across a field is a different matter. Which one applies gets established before anything is priced, because getting that wrong here is expensive to undo.
Can rainwater from a new hard surface soak into this ground?
Sometimes, and Breamore is not a place to assume it. The ground here is naturally wet, so a soakaway gets tested with a pit and a stopwatch before it goes on a drawing. Where it fails, the water has to reach a positive outfall instead, and this close to the River Avon that route wants thinking about rather than guessing at. The test costs a morning and saves rebuilding a drive that ponds every winter.
Breamore is seventeen miles from you. Is a small job worth it?
It is if it can be grouped. Breamore is around seventeen miles out, so a half day repair on its own is awkward, but Thomas will still come and look and tell you plainly whether it is worth doing now or worth waiting until there is more of it. The visit and the written itemised quote cost nothing either way. Where a neighbour wants work too, running both together makes the trip sensible.
How do materials reach us if a wagon cannot get down?
In smaller loads, with a dumper doing the last stretch. Where a full wagon cannot reach a Breamore property we tip at the nearest hard standing we have permission to use, then run stone in over boards or mats so the verge and the grass survive it. Spoil leaves the same way. It is slower, it gets planned before the first load arrives, and it appears as its own line on the quote.
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Driveways and patios near Breamore
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Get a price for paving in Breamore
Give us the address and tell us what the ground does in winter. We come and look at the fall, the access and the drainage, then put it in writing line by line, at no charge.