Driveways in Holt
Entrances, drives, patios and paths around Holt and BH21, built around where the water has to go rather than around what is in the brochure.
The site visit is free and so is the written itemised quote. Thomas Hannen prices every job himself.
Last updated
On a Holt drive the first question is never which surface. It is where the water is going to go, because almost nothing here is on a mains surface water drain and every drive has to deal with its own rain.
Most faults on drives out here fall into three groups. A long entrance off the lane that has gone to ruts and potholes and holds water halfway along. Gravel that has thinned in the wheel tracks and spread into the verge. Or a terrace at the back that has dropped at a corner, rocks underfoot and stays green through the winter; for that one, see patios in Holt.
We come out, walk the whole length with you and open a trial hole at the worst point. That usually shows the fault is in one section rather than the lot, and the quote reflects it. You get told plainly when the sensible answer is a repair, and you get told just as plainly when patching a failed base is throwing money at it.
The work
Long entrances, soft verges and drives that hold water
Entrances and the first thirty metres. The stretch nearest the lane takes every turning wheel, every delivery and all the water that comes off the road, and it is nearly always the part that has failed. The repair is not more stone on top.
It is excavating down to a firm formation, a geotextile membrane so the stone and the soft ground cannot mix, a sub-base compacted in layers, and a bound top in tarmac or resin where the fall would otherwise wash loose material onto the highway. A channel drain across the mouth stops your water becoming the lane's problem.
Gravel tipped straight onto soil disappears into it, and once it thins the tyres find the soft spot and the water follows the rut. Done properly there is a separation membrane at the bottom, a compacted sub-base, an edge restraint down both sides and a bound strip on the steeper sections. The ground around Holt is slow to drain, so a soakaway wants a percolation test rather than an assumption.
Shared entrances. Several houses off one track is common around Holt. We will price a whole track and split it by frontage so the neighbours each have something to look at, and phase it so one section is done at a time. Say so at the outset, because it changes how we write the quote rather than how we build it.
Concrete flags on five blobs of mortar rock, pond and stain, and they are usually the first surface to come up. Relaid on a full mortar bed over a compacted sub-base they stop moving, with the finished level kept clear of the damp proof course and a gravel margin along the wall where the garden will not give up the height. Sunken bays are a base fault and weed growth is only lost jointing sand, and we price them separately.
How it runs
Building a drive off a lane in Holt
Thomas walks the drive and the entrance with you, takes the levels at the door and the garage, and finds out where the water can go and where the spoil can go. The quote breaks out digging out, muck away, the sub base, the edgings, the finished surface and the drainage, so it can be set against anyone else's. Digging and laying sit on the same quote.
Getting machines and lorries in is often the real constraint out in Holt. At the site visit we settle whether a grab lorry can reach or whether spoil shuttles out by tipper. A long track may be dug in sections so you can still get in and out, and the lane is swept each evening so no mud is left for the neighbours.
An old soakaway, a buried tank or a broken drain found in the dig is shown to you in a photo, with its price, before we go on.
Keep the water on your own land and a new drive stays within permitted development. More than five square metres of hard surface draining to the road needs planning permission, explained in the Planning Portal guidance on paving a front garden. A new or wider opening onto the lane is a dropped kerb application to Dorset Council as highway authority. Where a forecourt, wall or gate pier belongs to a listed building, listed building consent comes first.
Cost
Dig depth, outfall and the length of the track
No rate per square metre from us. The layers under a drive decide more of the cost than the surface you see.
Clay. Holt's ground drains slowly and moves with the seasons. A soakaway that works on sand can fail its percolation test here, so a permeable drive may need a deeper sub base to store water, or a positive outfall to a ditch or drain. The government guidance on permeable surfacing sets out the options.
Length. A door straight onto the lane, a turning area behind a gate and a house at the end of a long track are very different amounts of dig, base and edging.
Spoil. If a grab lorry cannot get in, spoil leaves by tipper, which means more loads and more hours.
Finish. Block paving, tarmac, resin bound and gravel each need their own base and edge detail. Edgings are haunched in concrete so the drive does not creep outwards, and gravel on a slope wants a grid to keep it off the lane.
The mouth of the drive. Water from your drive must not run out onto the highway, so a channel drain across the entrance is often part of it.
Ask any rival quote how deep they will dig, what base goes in and how thick, where the water ends up, and who removes the spoil.
If it is urgent
A rutted entrance or a drive sending water into the lane
A slab that has lifted, a bay sunk by the door, a gully that has stopped taking water, a rut deep enough to ground a car, or an entrance sending its water across the lane will not keep.
Mark a trip hazard with a bin or a cone so nobody catches it after dark, and keep cars off a section that is breaking up. On the first visit we make it safe underfoot and give the water somewhere proper to go, even if the permanent repair comes later. If it is urgent, pick up the phone instead of sending the form; should nobody answer, you will hear back from us as soon as we can. Groundwork is scheduled Monday to Friday, 8am to 6pm.
The one local thing
Test the ground before anyone draws a soakaway
The ground around Holt drains slowly. That matters because the standard answer to surface water on a domestic drive is a soakaway, and a soakaway sized off a table rather than off a test will work perfectly in September and do nothing at all in February. The test is not exotic. It is a hole of a set size, filled with water three times, with the fall in level timed on each go.
It costs a morning. What it buys you is the difference between a drainage design and a drainage hope, and Approved Document H sets out how surface water is meant to be handled.
Where the test fails, the water needs another route, and we will tell you which one your plot allows. Either a positive outfall, piping the water to a ditch or a watercourse with the landowner's agreement, or a permeable surface with a deeper open graded storage layer under it that holds the rain and lets it go slowly.
Both cost more than a soakaway drawn on an assumption, and both are cheaper than doing it twice. The rule worth knowing before you plan anything: over five square metres of new impermeable hard surface at the front, draining to the road, needs planning permission. Keep the water on your own land and it stays permitted development, which is exactly what SuDS is asking for.
Who you are dealing with
The firm behind the digger, and its details
Drives in Holt, Holt Heath and the rest of BH21, through Furzehill and Colehill to Wimborne Minster, Three Legged Cross and Verwood, are built under Dorset Council as planning and highway authority. It is 8.6 miles from our Boscombe base to Holt.
Before any price, Thomas Hannen, who owns the business, walks the track with you. A Checkatrade customer, verified, rated the work 10 out of 10. The visit is free, as is the written quote with every line shown. Company details: Bournemouth Roofing & Building Ltd, registered in England and Wales, company number 15471719. Before you book a visit in Holt, you can read our customers' Google reviews, word for word, on our reviews page.
Planning at a glance
Do you need planning permission in Holt?
Most repairs in Holt 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.
| Question | In Holt |
|---|---|
| Who decides | Dorset Council is the planning authority for Holt. Dorset Council's heritage pages set out what it controls. |
| Conservation area | None covers Holt, so a like-for-like repair is ordinary maintenance. |
| Listed buildings | Yes, there are listed buildings in and around Holt. If yours is one, work can need listed building consent. |
| Protected landscape | No National Park or National Landscape covers Holt. |
Questions
Questions about driveways in Holt
Is gravel or tarmac better on a long rural entrance?
Gravel, on most of the entrances around Holt, provided the edges are dealt with. A long run of tarmac needs a continuous kerb or it breaks up at the sides where wheels drop off, and any tree root under it shows as a hump within a couple of seasons. Gravel over a geotextile and a stone base can be raked and topped instead of cut out. Where it steepens near the road we would bind that section.
The ditch at the end fills up. Can that be used?
Sometimes, and it is often the best answer here, because the ground at Holt has impeded drainage and a soakaway on its own will not empty in winter. A piped outfall into a ditch needs the ditch to be yours or the owner to agree, and it needs a headwall and a grille so it does not collapse or block. Where there is no ditch we look at a swale along the hedge line.
Can we still get the car out while you are here?
For most of it, yes. The excavation and the base go in as sections, so there is always a run of hardcore you can drive on, and we put boards over anything fresh. The exception is the day the binding layer or the mortar goes down, when the surface has to be left alone until the next morning. On a long entrance we start at the house end so the road end stays usable longest.
Is there a wrong time of year to start?
Late winter is the awkward one on this ground. Once the subsoil around Holt is saturated it turns to slurry under a machine and the trench sides will not hold, so the base takes more stone to build and the finish suffers for it. We can still work, but on a heavy plot we would rather book a drier spell and do the drainage first, since that is the part making the rest possible.
What do you look at on the visit before quoting?
Where the water goes, first of all. On a rural entrance that means walking the length of it in the wet if we can, finding the low point, checking whether the culvert at the road is clear, and digging a spit or two to see what lies under the existing surface. After that it is width for passing, turning space at the house, and whether a lorry gets in without reversing onto the lane.
Nearby, and next door
Driveways near Holt
Nearby places we also cover for driveways, with straight-line distances from Holt, and the other trades we offer in Holt itself.
Driveways nearby
Our other trades in Holt
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Free quote
Not sure whether it needs a repair or a rebuild?
Tell us the address and what you have noticed. We walk the drive, open a trial hole and leave you with an itemised written quote. Both are free.