Driveways 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.
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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.
Drives in Merley follow 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
Wider drives, crossovers and level access around Merley
Most original drives need rebuilding. 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 normally means the front lawn goes. Widening changes where the rainwater ends up, so the surface and the drainage get decided together, not 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 part that fails first. 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 on those the job is often about getting in and out, not 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. For the back garden, see patios in Merley. 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
Digging out and laying a drive on BH21 clay
Thomas comes out, measures up and prices it himself. He looks at the levels against the house, where the water runs now, and what the existing drive is sitting on, because Merley's clay moves with the seasons and a drive laid on a thin base cracks and sinks. The quote itemises excavation, muck away, sub-base, edgings, the surface and drainage.
The dig, the laying and the finish each have their own line on the written quote. The frontages here are usually open to the road, so the grab lorry and the skip can stand on your drive or at the kerb rather than blocking a narrow road. We keep a way in for your car where we can, keep the road clean, and take every load of spoil away. If we find an old soakaway, a broken drain or soft ground under the old drive, we photograph it and price it before digging further.
Permission. New hard surface over five square metres at the front needs planning permission unless it is permeable or drains to a lawn, border or soakaway on your own land, and Planning Portal guidance on paving your front garden sets out the test. A ground level patio at the back is permitted development. The ward's designated conservation areas are Canford Magna and Oakley Lane, and a drive on the estates falls outside them; the boundaries are on the council's site.
Cost
What sits under the surface is what you pay for
Two drives on the same close can price quite differently, and the surface is rarely the reason. The ground. Clay that shrinks in summer and swells in winter needs a deeper dig and a thicker, well compacted sub-base of crushed stone. A shallow base looks fine for a year and then ruts.
The layout. A detached house with an integral garage, a bungalow with a level front garden and a corner plot with two frontages are different jobs before anything is lifted. Levels against the damp proof course, and the fall towards the road or a channel, decide how much has to come out.
Water. On this clay a soakaway often drains slowly, so the choice between permeable block paving, a channel drain to an existing gully, or a new soakaway sized to the ground is a real cost decision, and it also settles the planning question.
Edgings and surface. Haunched edgings hold block paving in place. Resin, tarmac, gravel and block all sit on the same kind of base but cost different amounts to lay.
Spoil. Clay is heavy and bulks up once dug, so the number of loads to take away is its own line.
When you compare quotes, ask how deep the dig is, what sub-base goes in and how thick, where the surface water goes, whether the edgings are haunched, and who removes the spoil.
If it is urgent
A sunken bay or water standing by the door
A drive has no real emergency, but some faults get worse fast. A lifted block or a sunken patch by the front door is a trip, and water standing against the house or running into an integral garage will find the damp course.
Put a plant pot on the trip, clear leaves off the channel grating, and ring us rather than using the form. The first visit makes it safe and finds out whether the problem is the surface, the base or the drainage, before we price the proper repair. We do planned work Monday to Friday, 8am to 6pm. Can't get through? We return the call as soon as we can.
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 second opinion after a patch is often worth having here.
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. It is not 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
The firm pricing your drive, and how to check it
Merley is a 6.6 mile run from our Boscombe base. We lay drives and patios here and in Bearwood, Canford Bottom, Broadstone and Wimborne Minster, with BCP Council for planning. You would be hiring Bournemouth Roofing & Building Ltd, registered in England and Wales, company number 15471719. Before you book a visit in Merley, you can read our customers' Google reviews, word for word, on our reviews page.
It is Thomas Hannen's business, and Thomas walks the frontage and prices the drive himself. Checkatrade shows a verified customer's 10 out of 10 for us. Nothing is charged for the visit, and a written quote listing every item is free as well.
Planning at a glance
Do you need planning permission in Merley?
Most repairs in Merley 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 Merley |
|---|---|
| Who decides | BCP Council is the planning authority for Merley. BCP Council's heritage pages set out what it controls. |
| Conservation area | Canford Magna and Oakley Lane are the ward's two, and the Merley estates sit outside both, so a like-for-like repair there is ordinary maintenance. |
| Listed buildings | Yes, there are listed buildings in and around Merley. If yours is one, work can need listed building consent. |
| Protected landscape | No National Park or National Landscape covers Merley. |
Questions
Questions about driveways in Merley
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, not 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, not 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.
Nearby, and next door
Driveways near Merley
Nearby places we also cover for driveways, with straight-line distances from Merley, and the other trades we offer in Merley itself.
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Our other trades in Merley
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Free quote
Free quote for your Merley drive or patio
Send us a photograph or ring and describe it. The site visit and the written itemised quote are both free.