Driveways and patios in Bryanston

Long gravel drives. Plenty of the approaches here are loose stone and they fail the same way every time: the stone thins where the wheels run, the ruts hold water, and the water takes the rest of it downhill. Tipping more gravel on top lasts a season. What lasts is an excavation to a firm formation, a geotextile membrane, a sub-base compacted in layers, and the top stone held in a cellular grid so it cannot travel. Edges are the other half of it, a haunched kerb or a timber border, because a drive with lawn either side has nothing keeping it in.

Resin bound gives a firm, quiet surface with no jointing to empty and nothing to re-sand, and it will go over sound concrete, which saves a dig. Permeable block paving is the answer where the water has to stay on the plot, and single bays lift and go back without disturbing the rest. Tarmac still suits a long run that has to take turning traffic. The depth under all three is set by the use and by the ground, not by a catalogue.

Entrances, walls and turning space. A lot of the frontages here sit behind brick boundary walls with a gap only just wide enough for a modern car, so the real job is often the entrance rather than the drive: a proper radius, edge restraint that survives being clipped, and enough space inside to turn so nobody has to reverse out onto the road. The village sits in the Blandford St Mary and Bryanston Conservation Area, so what a wall, a gate or an entrance looks like carries weight, and where a wall has to be altered to widen an entrance that gets settled before anything is quoted rather than after.

Nearly a fifth of the housing here predates 1919, and those cottages sit low with ground built up against them over many years. Natural stone, porcelain and slabs all go on a full mortar bed with a fall away from the building, never on five dabs with a void in the middle. The finished level stays down off the damp proof course, and where there is not the height for that we drop a step, run a channel drain along the threshold, or keep a drained gravel margin against the wall so nothing bridges it.

The rest is repairs: a sunken bay relaid, pointing renewed on a stone terrace, a re-sand where the joints have emptied and weeds have taken hold, staining lifted, a gully cleared, a soakaway tested, an outfall found for a downpipe that runs onto the paving. Spoil goes on its own line, grab lorry where one can stand, skip where it cannot, barrow and small machine where the access is tight, and the disposal is named rather than folded into a rate.

Nobody can give you a rate per square metre honestly, because what is under the surface decides more of the price than the surface. A cottage with a wall tight to each side of the entrance, a house with a long drive a lorry can get up, and a newer terrace on a shared verge are three different jobs before the ground is opened. Depth of dig, ground conditions and how much muck leaves site carry most of it. Ask any builder how deep, what sub base, where the water goes, and who takes the spoil.

We cover Bryanston and DT11, across the river through Blandford Forum, Blandford St Mary, Stourpaine and Durweston, with Dorset Council for planning, building control and anything on 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.