Driveways and patios in Langton Matravers
Stone patios relaid, drives rebuilt and paving drained properly across Langton Matravers and BH19. We look at the ground first and price it in writing.
The site visit is free and so is the written itemised quote. Thomas Hannen prices every job himself.
Old stone paving is almost always worth relaying rather than replacing. The flags outlast everything laid under them, and at Langton Matravers what has gone wrong is nearly always the bed, the falls or the pointing between them.
Three things bring people in Langton Matravers to the phone. A stone patio has started rocking underfoot and turns green and slippery every winter. A drive runs downhill off the lane towards the house and the water now arrives at the door instead of going past it.
Or a car has to live on the road because the frontage was never built to hold one. We come out, lift a flag or dig a trial hole, and look at what is under it before we say a word about price. Then the site visit turns into an itemised written quote, with the bed, the edges, the drainage and the surface each on their own line.
The work
What the stone and the slope here ask for
Stone patios that have gone hollow. Most of the old paving we lift around here was bedded on sand or on five dabs of mortar, and a void under a flag is where the failure starts. The flag rocks, water sits in the hollow, and the joint opens up. Relaying it means a compacted sub-base, a full mortar bed under every unit rather than under the corners, and pointing in a mix soft enough for the stone. Hard cement pointing against soft stone looks tidy for two winters and then takes the arris off the flag with it.
Steps, and gardens that fall away. Plots on this side of the ridge drop, so a level terrace usually means a small retaining wall and a run of steps rather than one sheet of paving. Every riser wants to be the same height, the wall behind wants draining rather than sealing, and the patio still has to carry a fall away from the house. A terrace built dead level ponds in the middle. It wants about a slab thickness of drop across its width and you will never see it.
Where the lane sits above the garden, everything that lands on the drive heads for the front door and the garage. That is a drainage design, not a surfacing choice: a channel drain across the threshold, a gully connected to somewhere lawful, or a permeable build-up that takes the storm in the stone below. We work out the outfall first and choose between block paving, resin and tarmac afterwards, because doing it the other way round is how drives end up flooding a hall. The lanes here are narrow and often have nowhere to stand a lorry, so access is priced before anything else, and whether the muck goes out to a grab lorry at the roadside or by barrow through a side gate changes the job.
The sea is under two miles off and salt-laden air keeps hard surfaces damp between showers, so growth and staining come back faster than they do inland. Where kiln dried sand has washed out of the joints the blocks stop holding each other and the edges creep, and a clean, a re-sand and a properly haunched edge restraint or kerb fixes most of it. Sunken bays and rutting under a wheel are the ones that need the base opening up, because no amount of jointing sand puts depth back under a block.
How it runs
From your call to a written price
One person to ring, and an itemised quote: excavation, muck away, sub base, edgings, the surface and the drainage on separate lines. Relaying what is already there is maintenance. New hard surfacing at the front over five square metres that sheds onto the road needs planning permission, and the Planning Portal is clear about it, while a permeable surface or a fall to your own ground keeps it permitted development. Langton Matravers has its own conservation area, so anything that changes a boundary wall or a gate on the frontage is worth a call to Dorset Council first, and with fifty listed entries in the parish, listed building consent is a separate application again.
Cost
What decides the price of a driveway
No rate per square metre. What is under it decides more of the cost than what goes on top. A stone cottage on a lane with no frontage to stand on, a detached house down a shared track, and a bungalow with an open drive are three different jobs. On a lane with nowhere to stand a lorry, how the spoil leaves matters as much as the dig itself. Ask any quote how deep the dig is, what sub base goes in, where the water goes, and who takes the spoil.
If it is urgent
A trip hazard, or a drive that floods
Ring rather than use the form. A lifted slab, a sunken bay by a doorway or a gully that has stopped taking water will not wait. The first visit is about making it safe and getting the water going somewhere. Here that is usually a flag rocking on the top step of a garden, or a drive falling towards the house. The phone is answered 24 hours for emergencies; scheduled work runs Monday to Friday, 8am to 6pm.
Worth knowing
Ground that moves with the seasons, and what it does to paving
The ground under a good deal of this parish is cohesive and shrinks and swells with the weather. It takes up water in winter and gives it back in a dry summer, and the surface above moves a few millimetres with it. That is why a rigid surface here is a bigger commitment than it looks.
Concrete and resin over concrete are one continuous sheet, and when the ground below moves unevenly the sheet has to crack somewhere. Block paving, setts and stone flags on a proper bed absorb the same movement across thousands of joints and are far more forgiving. If you want a rigid finish on ground like this, it wants movement joints designed in from the start, and it wants a deeper sub-base under it.
The other half of it is where the drive puts its water. On shrinkable ground, soaking rainwater away right beside a foundation is a structural question rather than just a damp one, because that ground swells where it gets wet and shrinks where a tree takes the water back out. Approved Document H is the document that governs how surface water is dealt with, and the short version is that a soakaway belongs well away from the house, sized on a percolation test rather than a guess.
Where the test comes back poor, we design a positive outfall instead and say so on the quote rather than burying it in a rate.
Who you are dealing with
A local firm you can check
We cover Langton Matravers and the BH19 villages either side of it, from Swanage across to Kingston and Worth Matravers. 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.
Questions
Langton Matravers questions we get asked
Does the conservation area cover the wall as well as the paving?
It covers the walls, and around here that is the part that matters. The Langton Matravers conservation area takes in the stone boundary walls along the lanes, so knocking one back to widen an entrance is a different application from laying a new surface behind it. There are 50 listed entries in the parish as well. If a wall has to be opened up we want that settled with Dorset before the machine arrives.
Would porcelain look wrong next to the old stonework?
It can, and it is the joint that gives it away rather than the slab. Porcelain is sawn dead square with a tight edge, and set against rubble stone that has settled over a century every line reads as slightly off. If you want the low maintenance surface, we run a band of local stone as a border against the wall and keep the porcelain out in the middle where nothing has to line up.
Does being near the sea change what you use for edgings?
Only the metal in them. Langton Matravers is 2.6km from the coast and the wind carries salt inland, so anything steel goes early: edging pins, gate ironmongery, the mesh inside a gravel grid. We specify plastic or stainless for those parts. Salt also keeps a surface damp between showers, which is why paving on the seaward side greens up first and wants washing down more often than the sheltered side.
The garden falls away steeply. Can we still have a patio?
Yes, though it becomes a retaining job as much as a paving one. Plots in this part of Purbeck often drop away sharply behind the house, and on a fall like that two smaller terraces with a step between them behave far better than one big platform on made ground. The wall takes a proper footing, a drainage layer behind it and weep holes through it, because fill pushes hard once it is wet.
Can the spoil stay on site instead of going out?
Often it can, and on a narrow lane that saves a lot of lorry movements. Topsoil goes onto borders or gets bunded behind the shed if you have somewhere for it. Broken stone crushes down and goes back under the base. What has to leave is turf, roots and anything contaminated with old tarmac. We agree it on the visit, because it changes both the number of loads and where the skip sits.
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Get a price for paving in Langton Matravers
Tell us the address and what the paving is doing. We will come and look at the ground, then put an itemised price in writing. Both are free.