Driveways in Highcliffe

Communal parking areas. About a third of the homes in Highcliffe are flats, and most of those blocks have a shared parking court laid decades ago in tarmac. The faults repeat: ponding where the falls have flattened, a gully that has silted up and stopped taking water, potholes at the turning point, and edges crumbling into the planting.

We can patch, plane and overlay, or dig out and rebuild, and the three are priced separately so a committee can see the choice. If the block is leasehold, work over the statutory threshold triggers consultation under section 20 of the Landlord and Tenant Act 1985, so we set the quote out in a form a managing agent can put straight into that process.

Bungalow drives and level access. Bungalows are close to three in ten homes in Highcliffe, and on them the job is often about getting in and out safely, not looks. A flush threshold instead of a step, a gentle fall away from the door, a textured surface, not a polished one, and a handrail line kept clear. The paving has to finish clear of the damp proof course, so where the ground is tight we drop the level and run a channel drain across the door instead of building up to it.

Two thirds of the stock in Highcliffe went up between 1945 and 1982, peaking in the late fifties and early sixties, and those original drives were sized for a smaller car. The obvious improvement is widening onto part of the front garden. The build up matters more than the widening: a proper excavation to formation, a geotextile membrane, a compacted sub-base at a depth set by the ground, and an edge restraint haunched in along the new border so the blocks have something to push against.

The sea is a couple of hundred metres away, anything facing it stays damp between showers, and damp paving grows algae. Smooth pressed concrete slabs are the worst of it. Textured porcelain and riven natural stone hold their grip far better, and both sit on a full mortar bed over a compacted sub-base, never on blobs. Where a terrace has already dropped and rocks underfoot, relaying it properly costs less than people expect, because the slabs themselves usually lift clean. For a terrace or garden paving, see patios in Highcliffe.

On block paving, sunken bays, rutting where the car parks, weed growth and white staining across the surface are the usual faults. The first two are a base and edging problem. The last two are maintenance: a full re-sand with kiln dried sand closes the joints again, and efflorescence weathers off over a season or two without scrubbing. We will tell you which of them you actually have before you spend anything.

We do not work to a rate per square metre. The layers you never see cost more than the surface you do.

The ground. Highcliffe sits on Barton Clay with patchy terrace sand and gravel over it, so drainage changes from street to street. Where the gravel is thin, a permeable surface needs a deeper sub base or a channel with somewhere to go, and a pit test decides on a soakaway.

How deep, and how much comes out. An old concrete drive, tarmac over hardcore or a front lawn all dig out differently, and muck away is charged by the load.

The surface. Block paving wants a bed of sharp sand over the sub base; resin bound and tarmac want a bound base; gravel wants a grid. Edgings are haunched in concrete so the sides cannot spread.

Shared ground. A terraced house whose only route to the back is a shared alley means barrowing everything. In a communal court or a car park behind flats, the gullies and the falls are usually the real work, and the freeholder has to agree the specification.

Levels at the house. Keep the new surface under the damp proof course; next to a bungalow with low floors that can mean a channel drain across the front.

For other quotes, ask how deep they will dig, what goes in as the sub base and at what depth, and where the water goes.

Single width bungalow drives, front gardens and the car parks behind blocks in Highcliffe, Walkford and Chewton, and over in Christchurch and Barton on Sea, are all work we price, with BCP Council as highway and planning authority. Boscombe, where we are based, is 5.7 miles away.

Thomas Hannen, the owner, walks the ground with you before pricing anything. A customer verified by Checkatrade rated the job 10 out of 10. There is no charge for the site visit, nor for the written quote setting out each line. If you want to check the firm, it is Bournemouth Roofing & Building Ltd, registered in England and Wales, company number 15471719. Before you book a visit in Highcliffe, you can read our customers' Google reviews, word for word, on our reviews page.

Most repairs in Highcliffe 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.