Driveways in Hamworthy

Original concrete drives need replacing. Many drives in Hamworthy went down with the house: a concrete slab or two strips to a garage at the side, often laid straight onto the ground with no real sub-base. They fail in the same order.

A crack down each wheel track, a step where a section has sunk, then ponding at the garage door. Where the slab rocks, it comes out, the formation is cut to a firm level, a geotextile membrane goes down and the sub-base is built up in compacted layers to the depth the traffic needs. That dig and the muck away are the biggest part of the job, and a standard house drive usually takes a week or so from breaking out to the last joint.

Resin over sound concrete. If the old concrete is flat and solid and only the surface is tired, resin bound over the top is a two or three day job with no dig and very little spoil. We check it properly first, because resin laid over a slab that moves just cracks along the same lines.

Block paving. Still the most practical surface for a Hamworthy drive that takes a van or a trailer, and it can be lifted and relaid over a drain later. The failures are nearly always underneath it: a thin base that ruts, an edge restraint that was never haunched so the blocks creep into the border, and joints that lost their kiln dried sand and filled with weed. Rutted areas can be lifted, the base rebuilt and the same blocks relaid and re-sanded.

Tarmac. A good answer on a larger drive or a shared parking area, laid in two courses over a proper base with a kerb to hold the edge. Cracked and crazed tarmac over a failed base cannot be patched well, so we will tell you if a skim is pointless.

Front gardens into parking. Plenty of houses in Hamworthy were built with one space, and the front garden is the obvious place for a second. The paving is the quick part. A new or wider dropped kerb is a separate application to BCP Council, and the footway crossing is built to their standard. Under the rules on paving a front garden, more than five square metres of hard surface draining to the road needs planning permission, so we design it permeable or drain it onto your own ground, with a border left for the water to soak into.

Shared parking and flats. The newer blocks around Lower Hamworthy and the shared parking areas outside older flats are often one big apron owned by a freeholder or a management company. That work goes through them, and flats have no permitted development rights for hard surfacing, so a new surface needs planning permission. We write the quote so it can go straight to the managing agent.

Repairs. A sunken bay, a lifted kerb, a gully that has stopped taking water, weed through open joints. Small jobs, and usually worth doing before they spread.

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

Getting to it. A bungalow in Lake with a straight run to the road, a semi on Turlin Moor where the skip has to stand on a shared parking area, and a house on Blandford Road with traffic going past all day differ a great deal before a machine turns a wheel. 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 the Hamworthy peninsula in BH15, from Lower Hamworthy by the bridges through Central Hamworthy, Lake and Rockley to Cobbs Quay and Turlin Moor, about 7.7 miles from our base in Boscombe. BCP Council is both the planning and the highway authority here.

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 Hamworthy, you can read our customers' Google reviews, word for word, on our reviews page.

Most repairs in Hamworthy 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.