Driveways and patios in Lymington
Front gardens turned into parking, block paving relaid, patios and shared courts rebuilt across Lymington and SO41. Measured first, priced in writing.
The site visit is free and so is the written itemised quote. Thomas Hannen prices every job himself.
Before anything else, we measure whether a car will genuinely fit and get out again. Half the front garden jobs in Lymington are decided by depth from the wall to the pavement, and it is better to hear that at the visit than after the wall has come down.
Three sorts of call come from around here. The car lives on the street and the front garden looks like it might take it. The block paving that went down with a house in the eighties has sunk in the wheel tracks, gone green and grown weed through the joints.
Or a shared parking court behind a block has broken up and nobody is sure who is supposed to sort it. We come out, take the levels and the depths, dig a trial hole where the wheels will actually stand, and then put it in writing. The quote is itemised, so the dig, the sub-base, the edgings, the drainage and the surface can each be questioned on their own.
The work
Front gardens, eighties closes and shared parking courts
Turning a front garden into a parking space. Nearly half the homes in Lymington are semis or terraces, and on those streets the front garden is the only place a car can go. The number that matters is the depth from the back of the pavement to the bay window. If the car overhangs the footway you have not solved anything, and we will say so. Where it does work, the job is an opening in the wall finished with a pier, a dropped kerb applied for separately from the highway side, and a build-up that will take a wheel turning tightly in a small space, which is harder wear than a straight run.
Block paving from the eighties, at the end of its second act. A quarter of the stock here went up between 1983 and 2008, with the peak in the eighties, and a lot of the drives on those closes went in with the houses and have never been touched since. Kiln dried sand has washed out of the jointing, the blocks have stopped bracing each other and the edge restraint has given way where it was only ever bedded in soil. You get creeping edges, sunken bays and rutting where the wheels sit. Where the sub-base is still sound, that is a lift, a re-lay to proper falls, a haunched kerb and a re-sand rather than a new drive, and we would rather sell you that.
Shared courts behind flats are bigger areas with heavier turning loads, usually tarmac or concrete with a gully or two that stopped taking water years ago. The paving is the straightforward part. The awkward part is who instructs it, because where the cost falls on leaseholders above a certain figure the freeholder has to consult formally under section 20 of the Landlord and Tenant Act 1985. We are happy to survey it and put a written itemised price in front of a management company or a residents group so there is something real to consult on.
In the small town gardens space is tight, so levels do the work. Porcelain and natural stone both go on a full mortar bed rather than dabs, with pointing chosen to suit the joint width, and the finished level stays well below the damp proof course with a margin or a channel drain along the wall. Where a garden falls away, a step and a low retaining wall beat trying to build the whole terrace up to meet the house.
What we will talk you out of: resin over a base that is already cracking, because it is a continuous surface and it will crack where the base does; new paving laid over the old to save a dig, when the reason the old one failed is underneath it; and laying anything at all before the surface water has somewhere lawful to go, because a drive that ponds at the door is a job nobody enjoys coming back to.
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 and needs nothing. New hard surfacing at the front over five square metres draining to the road needs planning permission from New Forest District Council, and the Planning Portal sets out the test. A permeable surface, or a fall taken to a border or a soakaway on your own land, keeps it permitted development. The crossover is separate again and goes to the highway authority. There are around a hundred and sixty listed entries in the town, so work in the curtilage of one wants checking first.
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 terraced house with a front garden barely a car deep, a house on a close with a shared turning head, and a flat with a parking court behind it are three different jobs. In a parking court the gullies and the falls are usually more work than the surface over them. 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. In town that is usually a lifted slab on a shared path, or a gully flooding a bin store. The phone is answered 24 hours for emergencies; scheduled work runs Monday to Friday, 8am to 6pm.
Worth knowing
Listed buildings, and why the front path can be the listed part
There are around 160 listed entries in and around Lymington, which is a lot for a town this size, and they are not all grand buildings. A listing can take in the railings, the gate piers, the steps and the boundary wall in front of a house as well as the house itself, and on the older streets those front boundaries are exactly what a driveway job wants to remove.
Consent for that is a consent in its own right, separate from planning permission and asked for separately, and doing the work first and asking afterwards is not a position anybody wants to be in.
The practical version is short. Before you commit to an opening in a front wall, check whether the house is listed and whether the listing description mentions the boundary, and ring the council if it is not obvious.
If it is listed, the design usually shifts: the drive goes through the gateway that already exists, the paving is chosen to sit quietly against old brick and stone rather than to stand out, and any wall that does come down is taken apart carefully so the original material goes back on the returns. We price the wall work as its own line so you can see what that part of it costs before you decide.
Who you are dealing with
A local firm you can check
We cover Lymington and SO41, from Pennington across to Boldre and out towards Milford on Sea and Everton. 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
Lymington questions we get asked
Our front garden is shallow. Is it deep enough to park?
That is the first thing to measure. In the streets around Pennington, where 22.7% of the housing is terraced, front gardens are often shorter than a car once you allow for the gate and the bay window. If the bonnet or the boot overhangs the footway the council will not sign off a crossing. Thomas Hannen measures the depth on the visit and tells you straight if it does not work.
There are a lot of listed buildings here. Does that reach the paving?
It can. Lymington has 160 listed entries, including the parish church of St Thomas the Apostle and whole terraces of houses, and a listing covers railings, boundary walls and old paving in the curtilage as well as the building. Lifting a worn stone path, or taking out railings to widen an entrance, is the sort of thing needing consent from New Forest first. A patio at the back usually does not.
Who orders the work on a shared parking court?
Whoever owns the surface, which on a shared court is usually the freeholder or a residents company rather than the households using it. We need one person able to instruct and one clear plan of who owns what, otherwise the job stalls halfway through. The quote is set out area by area so the group can see which section is which before anyone commits, and Thomas Hannen will come to a residents meeting.
The ground moves in summer. Does that affect a patio slab?
It affects what you lay it on. This ground shrinks and swells with the seasons, so a slab bedded on thin sand over subsoil will lift and dish as the clay dries out and then takes up water again. We build a compacted stone base of proper thickness, keep the paving clear of the house so the two can move independently, and pipe roof water away rather than letting it soak in beside a footing.
Which way should the patio fall on a walled town garden?
Away from the house and towards something that can actually take the water, which in the walled gardens behind the Lymington terraces is rarely obvious. There is often no side access and no soft ground left, so the fall goes to a linear drain along the far wall and then into the existing surface water run if there is one. Agreeing that connection before we start is what stops the job halting.
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Get a price for a drive or patio in Lymington
Tell us the address and what you want doing. We will come and measure it, look at the ground, and put an itemised price in writing. Both are free.