Driveways in Downton

Old concrete, broken up and taken away. Much of the village went up between the war and the early eighties, and those houses came with bay-laid concrete drives. They fail at the joints first, then rut where the car stands, then start staining and holding water in the low spots.

Concrete cannot be levelled by adding to it, so it comes out: we break it, load the spoil straight into a grab lorry so it never fills your garden, and dig down to a firm formation. The depth depends on what is under there and on whether a vehicle is ever going to cross it.

Gravel that has gone travelling. Plenty of the older cottages in Downton have frontages of loose stone over nothing much, which always ends up on the pavement. A bound strip at the entrance, resin bound or tarmac, fixes it, so nothing is dragged out onto the highway. So does changing the whole surface to resin bound over a proper base, which keeps the gravel look and stays put. Both need an edge restraint with a haunch of concrete behind it, because a gravel drive without a border is just a slow leak.

The nineties block drives around Downton are rarely worn out. They have silted up, the jointing sand has washed out, weeds have taken the open joints and the whole thing has dished where the sub-base was thin. We lift the blocks by hand, keep what is sound, put right the base and the falls, re-lay on screeded sand and re-sand the joints with kiln dried sand brushed and vibrated in. That is a couple of days, not a week, and it costs a fraction of a new drive.

At the back of the older cottages the ground has usually crept up over the years. New natural stone or porcelain goes down on a full mortar bed with a fall running away from the wall, pointed properly, and set low enough to keep clear of the damp proof course and the threshold. Where the level cannot come down, a channel drain at the wall takes the water instead, and on a garden that falls away we build a step and a low retaining course rather than one long tilt. For a terrace at the back, see patios in Downton.

Ground here is naturally wet, so nearly every job ends up being about drainage: a gully silted solid, a fall running the wrong way, a garage bay that ponds. Depending on what the ground will actually take we build permeable, dig a soakaway sized from a percolation test, not a guess, or run a positive outfall to somewhere that will accept it. Approved Document H is the standard that sits behind all of that, and it sets the order those options should be considered in.

What is under the surface decides more of the price than the surface you choose. The ground. Parts of Downton sit low in the Avon valley and hold water. Where the ground is soft, the dig goes deeper and the sub-base is thicker, and where the water goes becomes a large part of the job: a permeable block, a gravel surface or a channel drain to a soakaway.

What comes out. An old concrete drive, tarmac or a buried slab must be broken up and taken away, and that is priced by the load.

Access. A wide bungalow frontage lets a machine turn. A cottage behind a narrow gate means hand work and more time moving spoil.

The surface. Block paving, resin bound over a proper base, tarmac and gravel each need different edgings and a different depth of base.

The kerb. A new or wider opening onto the road needs the highway authority to approve a dropped kerb, and we tell you before you pay for anything.

Ask other firms what depth they are digging, which sub-base they are using and how thick it is, and who takes the spoil away.

We lay drives in Downton, 18.4 miles from our Boscombe base, and in the Avon valley around it, through Redlynch and Lover and down towards Breamore and Fordingbridge. Downton, Redlynch and Lover fall to Wiltshire Council, while Breamore and Fordingbridge are in Hampshire and fall to New Forest District Council.

Our company is Bournemouth Roofing & Building Ltd, registered in England and Wales, number 15471719. Its owner is Thomas Hannen, and he measures up and prices the drive himself. One verified customer on Checkatrade gave a score of 10 out of 10. You pay nothing for the visit or for the itemised written quote. Before you book a visit in Downton, you can read our customers' Google reviews, word for word, on our reviews page.

Most repairs in Downton 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.