Driveways in Canford Heath

Sunken block paving gets relaid. Block paving laid in Canford Heath forty years ago often went on a thin sub-base, so it rutted where the car sits. The blocks lift out, the base is dug out and rebuilt in compacted MOT Type 1, a new sand bed is screeded, and the same blocks go back if they are sound. Kiln dried sand is brushed into the joints and topped up after a few weeks.

Widening for a second car. Often the lawn beside the drive. Turf, roots and topsoil come out, a geotextile membrane goes down, and the sub-base is built to match the old drive so the two do not settle differently. A widened drive usually needs a wider dropped kerb, which is an application to BCP Council as highway authority and is built to their standard.

Tarmac. Quick, cheap to repair and happy with a car turning on it. We cut back to a straight edge, lay a binder course and a surface course, and roll it hot. Edging goes in first, in block or concrete kerbs haunched in concrete, or the edges crumble again.

Resin bound. A porous stone and resin surface that suits a neat frontage. It needs a sound base: over a flat, solid concrete or tarmac drive it can sometimes go straight on, otherwise it goes on a new open graded base. It is laid in a day and cannot be driven on until it has cured.

Concrete and pattern imprinted concrete. Hard wearing, but not permeable, and a crack cannot be patched invisibly. Where it suits, it needs expansion joints and a designed fall to a channel drain.

Drainage. A drive falling towards the garage or the front door needs an ACO style channel drain across it, run to a soakaway or permeable area on your own land, not into the road. We keep the finished level at least 150mm below the damp proof course.

When we would say leave it. One sunken patch in otherwise sound block paving is a day's relay, not a new drive. Oil stains and moss come off with a clean, and our exterior cleaning page covers that.

No rate per square metre, because what is under it decides more of the cost than what goes on top.

Getting to it. A detached Canford Heath house on a close with room for a machine, a terraced house whose parking bay sits across a shared court, and a semi with a slope up to the garage call for different methods before any digging starts. Everything arrives and everything leaves by the same route. A drive you can back a lorry onto is cheaper to build than one where every barrow goes through a side gate.

The sub base. The part you never see is the part that decides whether the surface is still flat in ten years. Ground conditions, how deep it has to be dug and how much muck goes away are the real variables.

Water, and where it is allowed to go. Surface water has to be dealt with on the property rather than run into the road, which means a permeable surface or somewhere for it to soak away. That is a design decision with a cost, not an afterthought.

Comparing quotes? Ask how deep the dig is and what sub base is going in, where the surface water is going, whether the edgings are haunched, and who takes the spoil away.

We lay drives across Canford Heath and the rest of BH17, from Gravel Hill and Canford Heath Road across to Mannings Heath and Tower Park, from our base in Boscombe, about six miles away. BCP Council handles planning and dropped kerbs.

You are dealing with Bournemouth Roofing & Building, the trading name of 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. Before you book a visit in Canford Heath, you can read our customers' Google reviews, word for word, on our reviews page.

Most repairs in Canford Heath 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.