Driveways in Lover
Gravel and hoggin approaches, block paving, resin, tarmac and cottage patios around Lover and SP5. We walk the whole drive before we price any of it.
The site visit is free and so is the written itemised quote. Thomas Hannen prices every job himself.
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A long gravel drive at Lover that has potholed does not usually need surfacing in something else. It needs the water taken off it and an edge put on it, and that costs a fraction of a tarmac or resin run of the same length.
Out in Lover the trouble is usually with the approach more than the parking bay. The drive has rutted where the wheels always run and there is a hollow you now steer around. Water comes off the lane, follows the drive down and stands where you least want it. Or the path and the paving at the back of an old cottage have sunk, and the step out of the back door has quietly become a drop.
We come out, walk the whole length of it in the wet if we can, and dig a trial hole where the wheels sit. What you get back is an itemised written quote where the dig, the sub-base, the drainage and the surface are separate lines you can question one at a time.
The work
Long approaches, loose stone and cottage back doors
Gravel and hoggin drives that have stopped shedding water. A loose surface only works while the water leaves it. Once ruts form they become the channel, the stone migrates downhill and the hollows hold ponding all winter.
Putting it right is mostly earth work: excavate back to a formation that will carry a car, a geotextile membrane to stop the stone disappearing into soft ground, a compacted sub-base and a proper crossfall so water leaves the drive instead of running along it. The ground out in Lover is slow to drain, so on a long run we will often add a shallow channel drain or a gravel filled cut-off across the top, and then what comes off the lane never gets on to your drive in the first place.
Edges, which is what keeps a loose surface in place. Most stone drives that seem to need topping up are not short of stone. They are short of an edge restraint. Timber, a haunched kerb, a brick border or a bound margin in resin or tarmac at the road end all do the same job: they stop the surface spreading into the verge and stop stone being carried out onto the lane, which matters more here where there is no kerb line to catch it and nothing but grass either side.
Plots here usually have the room to turn, and if you are rebuilding a drive anyway it is the cheapest time to add a turning area. The build-up under a turning circle takes more punishment than a straight run, because a steered wheel scuffs and works the surface, so the depth goes up where the car turns and the quote shows that as its own area, not one rate across the lot. A dig also produces a great deal of material. On a bigger plot it can occasionally be graded into a bank or a low spot on site, which saves the muck away, but only if the ground can take it and nobody is creating a new puddle. We look at that on the survey and do not promise it in advance.
Many of the cottages out in Lover are old, and the paths and terraces behind them are small areas with awkward levels against walls that have been there a long time. Natural stone and reclaimed brick go on a full mortar bed with pointing, never a brushed-in compound, because irregular units and tight joints will not take a slurry. Where the ground has settled against a step, we rebuild the step instead of packing up the paving to meet it.
How it runs
A new drive off a country lane: how the job runs
Thomas comes out, walks the route from the lane to the house, looks at the levels and where water runs now, and prices it himself. Out in Lover access decides a lot: whether a digger and a grab lorry can reach the house, or whether part of it is done with a small machine and barrows.
The quote splits the work into digging out, spoil away, a compacted stone base, kerbs or edging, the surface you choose and the drainage. One written price covers it from the first cut to the last brush. Lover is 18.1 miles from our base, so machines and stone are booked to arrive together and the job runs straight through, not in stops and starts. The lane is kept clear and swept, you keep a way in where the layout allows, and the spoil leaves with us. A soft pocket, a buried drain or a root found in the dig is photographed and priced before we deal with it.
At Lover the planning authority is the New Forest National Park, and its property map shows what your address carries. For paving the rule is the standard one: covering more than five square metres of front garden with hard surfacing that drains to the road needs planning permission, as the Planning Portal explains. Build it permeable, or slope the water into your own garden, and it stays permitted development.
Cost
Length, access and the base: what a drive costs
How long it is. A house set back from the lane has a long approach, and every metre is dig, base, edging and surface. A turning area needs more depth than the straight run, because tyres scrub it, and it is priced apart.
Getting the kit in. A wide gate lets a digger and a lorry through. A gate a car only just clears means a small machine and more trips, and a narrow lane can mean the grab lorry waits on the road.
What is under it. An old gravel drive with ruts usually has a thin, mixed base with mud pumped up into it. Doing it properly means digging out to firm ground, laying a membrane and compacting a new sub-base in layers.
The surface. Gravel in a grid, resin bound, block paving and tarmac all price differently. Gravel suits a long country drive and drains freely, and in a National Park setting a surface that sits quietly in the view is worth thinking about.
Water. Where the run-off goes on a sloping drive, and whether a channel is needed at the lane, is settled at the survey. Approved Document H covers where surface water can go.
Ask any quote: how deep is the dig, and what base goes in? Where does the water go? Who takes the spoil, and is it included?
If it is urgent
A rutted drive, a lifted block or water pooling
A drive is rarely a true emergency, but some faults should not wait. Ring rather than using the form if a block has lifted into a trip, a bay has sunk by the door, a gully has stopped taking water, or a rut halfway down a gravel drive is deep enough to ground a car.
Mark a trip hazard with something bright for now. The first visit makes it safe, gets the water going somewhere, and finds out whether it is one soft spot or the base failing along the length. Day work runs Monday to Friday, 8am to 6pm. If you cannot get through, we ring back as soon as we can.
Worth knowing
Old walls have to breathe, and paving is what usually stops them
The older cottages around Lover have solid walls, with no cavity. They were built to take up damp and give it back off the surface, and many of them either have no damp proof course at all or have one sitting only a course or two above the ground.
That single fact decides more about paving at the back here than the choice of slab does. Every new surface laid on top of the last one lifts the outside level, and the day the paving passes the inside floor level, the wall starts wicking water indoors and the room smells of it by February. For a terrace or path, see patios in Lover.
So on an old cottage we set the finished level first and choose the paving second. That normally means taking the ground down rather than building it up, keeping the paving clear of the wall with a gravel margin or a narrow channel drain, and running the fall away from the house instead of into it.
It also means not sealing the base of a wall with concrete or a poured resin that runs right up to the brickwork, because that traps the moisture at exactly the point it was meant to escape. None of it costs much extra if it is designed in. All of it is expensive once the plaster inside has gone.
Who you are dealing with
Who lays your drive, and how to check them
Lover is 18.1 miles from our Boscombe base. We cover it and the SP5 villages around it, from Redlynch and Landford across to Downton and along the Forest edge. Planning is the New Forest National Park Authority, with Wiltshire Council for building control.
The business is Bournemouth Roofing & Building Ltd, registered in England and Wales, company number 15471719, and you can look it up on Companies House. Thomas Hannen owns it, and he walks the drive and prices it himself. One verified customer rated us 10 out of 10 on Checkatrade. Both the visit and the itemised written quote are free. Before you book a visit in Lover, you can read our customers' Google reviews, word for word, on our reviews page.
Planning at a glance
Do you need planning permission in Lover?
Most repairs in Lover 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 Lover |
|---|---|
| Who decides | New Forest National Park Authority is the planning authority for Lover. New Forest National Park Authority's heritage pages set out what it controls. |
| Conservation area | None covers Lover, so a like-for-like repair is ordinary maintenance. |
| Listed buildings | Yes, there are listed buildings in and around Lover. If yours is one, work can need listed building consent. |
| Protected landscape | Inside the New Forest National Park, where design is looked at more closely and permitted development rights are narrower. |
Questions
Questions about driveways in Lover
Do we need permission for a new entrance out here?
For the surface, usually not, as long as it drains onto your own ground. For the entrance onto the highway you do, because the crossing belongs to the council and not to the property. Lover sits inside the New Forest National Park, so anything visible from the lane, gates, posts and lighting, gets looked at more closely than it would elsewhere. We build to the boundary and stop until the highway side is agreed.
Is it worth binding the gravel or leaving it loose?
Loose gravel is fine on the flat and a nuisance on a slope, where it migrates downhill and finishes up in the lane. On a sloping entrance we either bind the top of the slope or set a cellular grid into the base so the stone stays where it is put. Loose does let water through, which counts for something on ground that is slow to take it once winter arrives.
What do you do about the tree roots in the entrance?
We work round them rather than through them. Cutting a major root to get depth for a base will either kill the tree or leave it unstable, and inside the National Park a tree beside the lane may be protected in any case. Over roots we build up instead of digging down, using a no dig construction with a geotextile and coarse stone that spreads the load. The level rises a little and the tree carries on.
The back door threshold is low. What can we do about the level?
Work down, not up: in the older cottages the threshold often sits barely above the outside ground as it is. So the patio goes in lower than the door and we form a step, or where you want it flush we run a slot drain across the doorway with a real outlet, not a gravel strip that silts up. Building up to the door causes the damp.
Is Lover too far out for a site visit?
No, and there is no charge for the visit. Lover is at the far edge of the patch, so Thomas Hannen ties it in with other work over that side, which sometimes means offering you one day to pick from. The written itemised quote follows, with excavation, base, drainage and disposal set out on separate lines.
Nearby, and next door
Driveways near Lover
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Free quote
Get a price for a drive or patio in Lover
Tell us the address and what the drive or the paving is doing. We will come and look at the ground, then put an itemised price in writing. Both are free.