Driveways in Mudeford

A sunken block drive can be relaid. A lot of block paving from the seventies and eighties went down on a thin sub-base, and forty years of cars have pushed ruts into it.

Blocks are forgiving: they come up, the bedding sand and the base below are made good, and the same blocks often go back down if they are sound, which keeps the cost and the waste down. If the base was never deep enough, it is dug out, a geotextile membrane goes down, and a new sub-base is laid and compacted in layers.

New block paving. Blocks are laid on screeded sharp sand inside an edge restraint haunched in concrete, compacted with a plate, and filled with kiln dried sand that is topped up after the first few weeks. Permeable block, with wider joints and a free draining base, lets the rain soak in where it falls and keeps the frontage within the rules for front gardens.

Resin, tarmac and concrete. Resin bound is porous and tidy on a level frontage, laid in one go over a sound, dry base. Tarmac takes a turning wheel well and is quick to lay. Concrete, plain or pattern imprinted, is hard wearing but cannot be patched invisibly, and it sheds all its water, so the fall and a channel drain have to be designed in from the start.

Parking a second car. Turning a Mudeford lawn into drive is mostly digging: turf, topsoil and roots out, spoil away by grab lorry or skip, and the new surface kept below the damp proof course of the house. Widening where you cross the pavement means a bigger dropped kerb, which is an application to BCP Council as highway authority, and the footway is rebuilt to their specification. We sort the order so you are not left with a drive you cannot drive onto.

Shared frontages. Where two Mudeford homes share a drive or a parking court, we agree the line with both neighbours before we dig, lay a clean border where one surface meets the other, and make sure the new levels do not send water onto next door.

Low ground near the harbour. Parts of Mudeford sit low beside Christchurch Harbour, and on those plots it is worth checking the flood risk for your address on the government flood map before choosing a surface, because it changes where the water from a new drive should go. There a permeable block or resin over a free draining base is usually the better answer than a sealed surface with a channel drain, and we set the levels so nothing runs towards the house or the garage door.

Repairs. A sunken bay by the garage, a cracked kerb, ponding against the house, oil staining or weed in the joints. These are often a day or two, and we will say so rather than sell you a new drive.

No rate per square metre, because what is under it decides more of the cost than what goes on top.

Getting to it. An open plan Mudeford bungalow frontage with room for a machine, a town house with a shared parking court, and a detached house behind a wall and gate pillars could hardly be more different before any digging starts. Everything arrives and everything leaves by the same route. A drive you can back a lorry onto is cheaper to build than one where every barrow goes through a side gate.

The sub base. The part you never see is the part that decides whether the surface is still flat in ten years. Ground conditions, how deep it has to be dug and how much muck goes away are the real variables.

Water, and where it is allowed to go. Surface water has to be dealt with on the property rather than run into the road, which means a permeable surface or somewhere for it to soak away. That is a design decision with a cost, not an afterthought.

Comparing quotes? Ask how deep the dig is and what sub base is going in, where the surface water is going, whether the edgings are haunched, and who takes the spoil away.

We lay drives across Mudeford, Stanpit and Friars Cliff, from the quay and Avon Beach back towards Christchurch, in BH23, from our base in Boscombe, about four miles west. BCP Council is both the planning and the highway authority.

You are dealing with Bournemouth Roofing & Building, the trading name of 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. Before you book a visit in Mudeford, you can read our customers' Google reviews, word for word, on our reviews page.

Most repairs in Mudeford 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.