Driveways in Moordown

Turning a front garden into a drive. Most inter-war houses in Moordown were built with a front garden behind a low wall and a path to the door.

Taking that out for a car means removing the wall where needed, digging out the lawn and topsoil to a firm formation, laying a geotextile membrane and a crushed stone sub-base compacted in layers, usually 150mm or more for a car. Then an edge restraint haunched in concrete and the surface. A typical frontage takes about a week, most of it the dig.

Block paving. Still the most common choice on a Moordown semi. Laid on a screeded sand bed, cut to the edges, then vibrated in and jointed with kiln dried sand. It can be lifted and relaid if a drain has to be dug up, which matters on a road where services run under the front garden.

Permeable paving and drainage. Permeable block paving on an open graded base lets rain soak through, which keeps the paving within permitted development and gives the water somewhere to go. Where the surface is not permeable, a channel drain across the front and a fall to a planted border or a proper outfall does the job. A soakaway needs space to sit five metres from the house under Approved Document H, and on a small frontage there often is not room, so we design the drainage first.

Tarmac, resin and concrete. Tarmac is quick and suits a wide Moordown bungalow frontage. Resin bound gravel looks clean and drains, but it must go on a sound base; laid over old cracked concrete it copies the cracks within a winter. A cracked concrete drive usually has to come out, and the spoil goes away in a grab lorry or a skip.

Relaying a sunken drive. Rutting in the wheel tracks or ponding by the front step usually means a thin sub-base. We lift the blocks, dig out the soft area, rebuild the base, relay and re-sand. Weeds and staining alone want a clean and fresh jointing, not a new drive.

When we would say no. A frontage too short for a car to sit clear of the pavement, or resin on a drive where the base is poor. You are better hearing it at the visit.

One person to ring from the first visit to the last. The quote is itemised, not a figure on the back of a card: excavation, muck away, the sub base, edgings, the surface itself and the drainage on separate lines, so you can compare it properly against anyone else's.

Nothing is left open or unusable overnight. The site is swept at the end of each day rather than the end of the job, and what comes out leaves with us. If something turns up once we start that nobody could have seen, you get a photograph and a price before we carry on.

A house can pave its front garden without planning permission if the surface is permeable or drains to a lawn or border; over five square metres of hard surface draining onto the road needs permission, as Planning Portal guidance on paving your front garden explains. A dropped kerb is a separate application to BCP Council. Flats have no permitted development rights for paving. Moordown has no conservation area of its own; the council keeps the list.

Ring rather than use the form. A lifted slab, a sunken bay by a doorway or a gully that has stopped taking water are the ones that will not wait, because somebody falls or water ends up against the house.

The first visit is about making it safe and getting the water going somewhere, and we quote the permanent work once the ground can be opened up. If a slab or block has lifted by the gate where people walk, mark it or cover it with a board until it is relaid, and keep cars off any area that has started to sink. Scheduled work runs Monday to Friday, 8am to 6pm. For anything urgent, ring rather than use the form, and if we cannot pick up we ring you back as soon as we can.

Call now: 07435 839745

Wimborne Road runs through the middle of Moordown as the A347, a busy classified road and a main bus route, with the shops and the houses between them. That changes the paperwork for anyone wanting a drive on it.

A new dropped kerb onto a classified road in Moordown needs planning permission as well as the council's highway consent, and the council will look at visibility, the bus stops and how close you are to junctions. On the quieter side roads it is usually just the highway application.

So if your Moordown house fronts Wimborne Road, get the kerb question answered before you pay for a design. Check whether you can turn a car and leave forwards, because reversing onto a bus route is the thing the highway officer will worry about. We will set out the levels and the width so the drive meets the crossing properly, and price the paving so you have it ready to go once the council agrees. If the frontage is too tight to get a car in and out safely, we will tell you before you spend money applying.

Nearby places we also cover for driveways, with straight-line distances from Moordown, and the other trades we offer in Moordown itself.

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