Driveways and patios in Crossways

Old concrete taken out, or covered. A lot of the original drives in the village are concrete, and concrete does not fail gradually: it holds up for years, then cracks at the bays and starts to see-saw. Where the slab is still flat and unbroken it will take resin bound stone or new paving straight over the top, which saves the whole cost of breaking it out. Where it is cracked across its width we take it up, and the disposal goes out by grab lorry or skip with the price for it on the quote in advance.

Open frontages that need defining. Plenty of houses here have no wall or hedge at the front, just lawn running to the pavement, so the parking area has to define itself and there is nothing holding the edge in. We set a haunched edge restraint or a kerb line to give it a clean border, dig the extra area to formation, and lay membrane and a compacted sub-base at the depth the ground needs. Done properly you get a drive that looks deliberate rather than a strip of paving that has crept across a lawn.

The strip in front of a garage door is the part that fails first and matters most, because if the fall runs the wrong way you get water inside. We reset the levels so the surface drops away from the threshold, put a channel drain across the front where the ground is flat, and take that water to a gully or a soakaway rather than letting it lie against the door. The ground here shrinks and swells, so where rainwater ends up beside a foundation is a structural question and not only a damp one.

On the newer parts of the village the block paving itself is usually fine and the base under it has settled. We lift the affected bays, re-compact and correct the sub-base, reset to a true fall and re-sand with kiln dried jointing sand, and that takes the weeds and the staining with it, because both come from open joints and standing water. Gardens here are generous, so the patio does not have to be a strip against the back wall, and a second seating area further down the garden is often less work than extending the first, because it needs no drainage work against the building.

We do not price by the square metre, because what is under the surface decides more of the cost than what goes on top. A house with an open frontage straight off the estate road, a bungalow with a run down the side to a garage, and a property on the edge of the village with a long approach are three different jobs at the same square metres. Ground conditions and the depth of the dig are the real variables. Ask what sub base is going in, where the water goes, and who takes the spoil.

We cover Crossways, Moreton, Woodsford and the DT2 villages east of Dorchester, travelling out from a Bournemouth base, and the site visit and quote are both free. 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.