Driveways and patios in Corfe Mullen
Drive widening, block paving, resin bound surfaces and patios across Corfe Mullen. We rebuild what is under the surface, not just what you can see.
The site visit is free and so is the written itemised quote. Thomas Hannen prices every job himself.
A thin layer of tarmac laid for one small car is what most Corfe Mullen drives were built as. If yours is cracking, sinking or simply too narrow for two vehicles, the fix is a proper dig and a real sub-base, and that is a job of days rather than weeks.
The calls come in three shapes. Somebody is fed up reversing off the verge because the drive only takes one car. An original concrete or tarmac surface has broken up at the edges and weeds have taken the cracks. Or a rear patio of old flags has sunk towards the house and now holds water against the wall.
We come out, measure what you have got, look under the surface where we can, and give you an itemised written price. Where the existing base is genuinely sound we will say so and quote the smaller job, because covering good ground twice is the easiest money in this trade and we would rather have the recommendation.
The work
Drives built in the seventies, and what they need now
Widening a drive that was never wide enough. Nearly two thirds of the village went up between 1945 and 1982, and a third of the whole place in the 1970s and early eighties, when one car per house was the assumption. Widening means excavating the extra strip to formation, laying a geotextile membrane and a compacted sub-base at the same depth as the rest, then tying the new surface into the old so there is no seam to fail along. Nine times out of ten the sensible answer is to take the whole frontage up and lay it as one, because a patched half never quite matches and the join is the first thing to crack.
Original drives here were often laid thin, straight onto whatever was there, and once the edges have crumbled and the middle is cracked an overlay just follows the fault up. We break it out, take the spoil away, and rebuild in block paving, resin bound stone or fresh tarmac depending on what you want to look at. Broken concrete is heavy and the disposal is a real line on the price, which is why it belongs on the quote in writing rather than as a surprise.
Bungalow side accesses. A third of the houses here are bungalows and a lot of them have a long narrow run down the side to a garage at the back. Those strips take the same loading as the front drive but rarely got the same base, so they rut and dish first. They also collect water, with the house on one side and a fence on the other, and this ground drains poorly, so a channel drain or a defined fall to a gully matters more than the paving does.
Where a block drive has settled we lift, correct the sub-base, reset to a true fall and re-sand with kiln dried jointing sand. Where the edge restraint was never haunched properly the whole edge has usually crept, and that goes back on concrete so it stops. Rear gardens here are generally decent sized and the original patio is often a small square of concrete flags: porcelain or natural stone on a full mortar bed, laid to fall away from the house, with the finished level kept below the damp proof course and a step down from the threshold where it needs one.
How it runs
From your call to a written price
Excavation, muck away, the sub base, edgings, the surface and the drainage are set out on separate lines, so the quote can be compared properly against anyone else's. Paving over a front garden is normally permitted development where the new surface is permeable, or where the water is directed to a lawn or a border rather than out into the road. Over five square metres of solid surface draining to the highway and you need planning permission. A new or widened dropped kerb is applied for separately from Dorset Council as a highway matter. Corfe Mullen has no conservation area over it and one listed entry, so the material and the colour are genuinely your choice.
Cost
What decides the price of a driveway
Nobody should quote you a rate per square metre, because what is under the surface decides more of the price than the surface. A detached house with an open frontage onto the road, a bungalow with a narrow side run to a back garage, and a terrace where the parking is round the rear are three different jobs before anyone measures anything. On ground that drains this poorly, somewhere for the water to go is part of the design. Ask what depth, what sub base, are the edgings haunched, and who takes the spoil.
If it is urgent
A trip hazard, or a drive that floods
Ring rather than use the form. A slab that has lifted or a bay sunk by a doorway will not wait, because somebody falls or water ends up against the house. The one we see most here is a drive that has settled towards the house, so water that used to run to the road now arrives at the front door. The phone is answered 24 hours for emergencies; scheduled work runs Monday to Friday, 8am to 6pm.
The one local thing
A village of drives that all reached the same age together
Around six in ten homes here were built between 1945 and 1982, and the peak was the 1970s and early 1980s. That matters for a practical reason. When a whole estate goes down inside a few years, the drives on it wear out inside a few years of each other too, which is why one street can suddenly be full of broken tarmac and lifted edges.
It also means the original specification is fairly predictable: a shallow base, a thin surface, an edge that was never restrained, and a width sized for a car noticeably smaller than the one on it now.
So the question here is usually not repair or replace, it is how far out to go while the machine is on site. Widening the drive is far cheaper done in the same visit than as a second job two years later, and the same is true of moving a soakaway, putting a duct in for a car charger, or taking the paving round to a bin store.
The one thing you cannot decide on your own is the entrance: making a crossover wider means crossing the verge and the kerb, and that is applied for from the council rather than settled with us. Get that in motion early and the rest follows easily.
Who you are dealing with
A local firm you can check
We cover Corfe Mullen, Broadstone, Lytchett and the BH21 villages either side of Wimborne, and it is a short run from our Bournemouth base to price a job here. 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
Corfe Mullen questions we get asked
Only one listed entry in Corfe Mullen. Does anything restrict paving?
Very little on appearance. Corfe Mullen has no conservation area and a single listed entry, so unless you happen to own that one, nobody will tell you what colour a drive should be. Dorset Council is the planning authority and its interest is in drainage and in the crossing over the footway. That puts the whole argument onto the ground underneath rather than onto the look of the surface.
The estate went up in the seventies. Is our drive due?
Probably at much the same time as the neighbours'. 62.1% of Corfe Mullen was built between 1945 and 1982, with 34.5% of it landing in the 1970s and early 1980s, so the original drives went down within a few years of each other and reach the end together. That is why a road suddenly looks tired all over. It is also why we price what has actually failed rather than assuming everything comes up.
The lawn stays soft all year. Where does the drive drain?
Not onto the lawn, which is the usual mistake here. Corfe Mullen has impeded drainage, so grass already soft in July will not absorb a winter of run off from a paved area on top of the rain falling on it. Water needs a defined route: a channel at the low end, a piped run, and an outfall that keeps working when everything is wet. Any soakaway gets a timed pit test first.
A third of homes here are bungalows. Does the layout change?
It changes what a frontage has to do. Bungalows are 33.6% of Corfe Mullen and their plots tend to be wide and shallow, so the drive handles turning, parking and a level route to the front door in the same space. That means working out where a car actually swings, keeping the fall away from a low threshold, and finding width for two cars without leaving a strip of grass nobody can use.
Is widening worth doing while the machine is on site?
It is the sensible moment, because excavation, compaction and edge restraint are the same operations whether a drive is one car wide or two. Doing it afterwards means breaking the new edge out again. What is not automatic is the road side: if widening needs a wider crossing over the footway, that is a Dorset Council application on their timetable. It sits on the quote as its own item so it can be decided separately.
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