Driveways in Kinson

New drives on old front gardens. This is how a front garden becomes a drive. The turf and topsoil come off and go away, and on a front garden that is a surprising number of skip loads.

The formation underneath is dug to a firm level, a geotextile membrane goes down, and the sub-base is built up and compacted in layers to the depth a car needs. Edges get a kerb or an edge restraint set in concrete and haunched at the back, because an unhaunched edge is why so many drives spread into the border. A typical front garden conversion is about a week on site, once the dropped kerb is agreed.

The dropped kerb. A new crossing over a Kinson pavement is a separate application to BCP Council as the highway authority, and the council builds or approves the crossing to its standard. It is usually the slowest part of the whole job, so we tell you to apply as soon as you have decided. The government guidance on dropped kerbs explains the process.

Replacing a cracked concrete drive. Post-war concrete was often laid straight on the ground, and it fails in the same order: a crack across the slab, a step where one piece has sunk, then ponding. If the slab rocks or has dropped, it comes out and the drive is rebuilt on a proper base. If it is flat and solid, resin bound over the top can be a two or three day job with very little spoil.

Block paving. Still the most practical surface for most houses in Kinson, because it can be lifted over a drain and relaid. Rutting means a thin base, so the rutted area is lifted, the base rebuilt, and the same blocks relaid on a sand bed and re-sanded with kiln dried sand. Weed in the joints is lost sand, not bad blocks.

Tarmac and concrete. Tarmac suits a wider drive or a shared run to garages behind a row, laid in two courses over a proper base with a kerb to hold it. A new concrete drive is still a fair answer if it is laid with movement joints and a fall.

Where the water goes. Under the rules on paving a front garden, more than five square metres of hard surface that drains onto the road needs planning permission. So we lay the drive permeable, or fall it onto a border or a soakaway on your own ground, and keep the water off the pavement and away from the house. A channel drain across the mouth of the drive catches what runs down it.

Repairs. A sunken patch, a lifted kerb, a gully that has stopped draining, a step at the garage door. Small jobs, and cheaper done before the rest of the base goes with them.

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

Getting to it. A Kinson bungalow with a wide frontage and a straight run for the lorry, a semi on an estate road with the skip on the street under a permit, and a house on Wimborne Road with traffic passing all day ask for quite different work before any digging starts. 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 Kinson in BH10 and BH11, along Wimborne Road and Kinson Road, out to Bear Cross and West Howe and across to Northbourne, 3.7 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 Kinson, you can read our customers' Google reviews, word for word, on our reviews page.

Most repairs in Kinson 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.