Driveways and patios in Merley
Rebuilding, widening and repairing the drives and patios that went down with the houses here, priced from the ground up.
The site visit is free and so is the written itemised quote. Thomas Hannen prices every job himself.
If your Merley drive is the one that came with the house, the trouble is rarely the concrete or the tarmac you can see. Those drives were built to the standard of the day, on a thin sub-base, for one small car. The repair that lasts is in the ground, and the only way to know how bad it is is to open a hole in it.
The calls from Merley have a pattern. Two or three cars now live where one used to, the garage was built for a car nobody makes any more, and the front is a patchwork of repairs where the block paving sank at the crossover. Or the back patio has started to rock because it went down on five dabs of mortar. Or somebody wants to get in and out of the house without a step and a puddle in the way.
We come and look at the whole of it. Where the water runs now, what depth of stone is under the existing surface, whether the crossover is sound, and what you actually need to park. You get a written quote with the dig, the muck away, the sub-base, the edgings, the surface and the drainage itemised, so you can hold it next to anyone else's and see what is missing from theirs.
The work
The drives, crossovers and patios we do around Merley
Rebuilding the original drive. Merley went up in one long push, the great majority of it before the early 1980s, so the drives are all of an age: concrete bays cracked along the joints, or tarmac gone porous and holding moss. We excavate to formation, compact it, lay a geotextile membrane across any soft ground and put the sub-base back at a depth that matches what parks on it. That is the part you never see and the part that decides whether it is still flat in ten years.
Widening for a second and third car is the usual ask here, and it is normally the front lawn that goes. Widening changes where the rainwater ends up, so the surface and the drainage get decided together rather than one after the other: a permeable build up, or a fall to a border or channel drain inside your own boundary. The ground under Merley shrinks and swells with the weather, so where the run off finishes beside a foundation is a structural question and not only a damp one. The new side gets a proper edge restraint, which is what stops the whole thing spreading.
The crossover is the repair we do most. The footway crossing takes the full weight of every car and delivery van as it turns in, and a thin base shows up there first. Lifting the sunken bays, putting the sub-base back to depth, haunching the edge restraint and relaying the same blocks is a day and it holds. Rebedding those blocks on a bit more sand is a season.
Close to a third of the houses here are bungalows, and much of that work is about getting in and out rather than looks: an even fall with no ponding, grip in the wet, no lip at the threshold, and a channel drain across the door where you want to come out level. Concrete flags on five dabs of mortar were the standard back garden of the period and they are the ones that rock. We relay on a full mortar bed with the falls running away from the house and the finished level clear of the damp proof course. What we would talk you out of: sealing a drive to hide a base problem, resin over failed tarmac, and replacing a whole drive when two sunken bays and a re-sand is what it needs.
How it runs
From your call to a written price
Same team from first visit to last, one person to ring, and nothing sub-contracted. The quote is itemised: excavation, muck away, sub base, edgings, surface and drainage on separate lines.
On permission. More than five square metres of new hard surface at the front needs planning permission unless it is permeable or drains to a border, lawn or soakaway on your own land, and Planning Portal guidance on paving your front garden covers it. A patio at ground level at the back is permitted development. No conservation area covers the housing here, and the listed entries near Merley sit on the Canford School estate rather than in the streets, but the council keeps the list if you want to check your own address.
Cost
What decides the price of a driveway
Two drives on the same close can price differently, and it is rarely the surface that does it. A detached house with an integral garage, a bungalow with a level front garden and a corner plot with two frontages are three different jobs before a slab is lifted. Then there is the ground, which moves with the weather here, so where the water is allowed to finish up is a design decision with a cost rather than an afterthought. Comparing quotes, ask the dig depth, the sub base, where the surface water goes, whether the edgings are haunched, and who removes the spoil.
If it is urgent
A trip hazard, or a drive that floods
Ring, do not use the form. A lifted slab, a sunken bay by a doorway or a gully that has given up are the ones that will not wait. If water is standing against the front of the house, or running back down towards an integral garage, that one gets looked at first. We make it safe, then price the permanent work. Anything outside 8am to 6pm, Monday to Friday, is by arrangement.
Worth knowing
Merley was built all at once, and it is wearing out all at once
Merley is essentially one cohort. The overwhelming majority of it went up between the war and the early 1980s, with the biggest single share in the 1970s, and the drives went down with the houses to the same specification within a few years of each other. So they reach the end together.
When one goes on a road, there is usually a run of them within a couple of years, which is why you see three skips on the same street in a spring. It changes what a sensible quote looks like: patching a surface that is failing because the base under all of it has run out is money spent twice, and a fair share of our work here is a second opinion after a patch.
It also means the whole estate was drained as one scheme. The roads shed water to highway gullies and each plot was built with a modest amount of hard surface at the front. Every lawn that turns into parking sends more water to the same gullies, which is the practical reason behind the permeability rule rather than a bit of paperwork somebody invented.
We design a widened drive to hold and release its own water: a permeable surface over open-graded stone, or a channel drain to a soakaway or a planted border inside your boundary, rather than a fall out over the kerb.
Who you are dealing with
A local firm you can check
We cover Merley, Bearwood, Canford Bottom, Broadstone and Wimborne Minster, and BH21 generally. 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
Merley questions we get asked
Half the drives on our road are cracking at once. Why?
Because they were laid at the same time. Around 77.0% of Merley went up between 1945 and 1982, peaking in the 1970s and early 1980s, so the original drives share an age and a construction. Thin concrete or tarmac on a light base gets to the end of its life together. What has usually gone is the base underneath rather than the surface on top, which is why filling one crack buys a single season.
Can you match the block paving the neighbours have had?
Close, rarely exact. Merley is 49.0% detached houses on plots where the frontages read as one run, so a mismatch is obvious from the pavement. Blocks weather to a different shade and ranges get discontinued, so we lay a sample area on your own drive and you look at it in daylight before we carry on. If several houses want a matching run, order the lot in one batch.
Who applies for the footway crossing on a BCP road?
Bournemouth, Christchurch and Poole Council, as highway authority. They run the application, they set the construction detail and they inspect the finished crossing. Our work stops at your boundary, and the crossing sits on the quote as a separate item because the two halves are approved and built differently. Widening one that is already there is still their decision, even where the drive behind it is entirely your own ground.
Where should water off a new drive be sent here?
Away from the house first. Merley drains freely near the surface but the ground below shrinks and swells with a significant rating, so a concentrated soak beside a foundation is a structural problem rather than just a wet wall. The fall takes water to a channel or to a soakaway set well clear of the footings, and the paving at the door finishes low enough that nothing can run back over the threshold.
Does a cracked 1970s concrete drive have to come out?
Not always. Where the slab is sound and only the top has gone, it can stay as the base for blocks or resin, as long as the levels still work at the door and the falls are right. On the estate drives in Merley the slab is often thin and cracked right through, and then it comes out. We break a hole in it during the visit to see what is under there before anyone decides.
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Driveways and patios near Merley
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Send us a photograph or ring and describe it. The site visit and the written itemised quote are both free.