Driveways in Owermoigne
Lane entrances, parking that has churned up and patios laid to the right level, priced in writing after a free visit.
The site visit is free and so is the written itemised quote. Thomas Hannen prices every job himself.
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We build drives and parking areas in Owermoigne and the DT2 lanes around it; for garden paving, see patios in Owermoigne. Out here the work usually starts at the road and runs a long way in, so what the ground is doing and where the water finishes up get settled before anybody picks a surface.
Owermoigne drives rut and wash out, cottage patios sink, and parking areas churn up under extra vehicles. A gravel entrance that has rutted into two tracks and washes a fan of stone out onto the lane every winter. A patio behind a cottage that has dropped at one corner, holds a puddle for two days and has gone green in the shade. Or a parking area that was fine for one car and has churned up now that two cars, a trailer and the delivery vans all use it.
We come out, open a hole where the drive will take the weight, take levels off the house and look at where the water goes now. On ground that moves with the seasons that matters more than the choice between resin and block paving. If the honest answer is that yours wants lifting and relaying, not digging out, that is what goes in the written quote.
The work
Lane entrances, cottage thresholds and yards that have churned up
Entrances and long drives off the lane. Most drives in Owermoigne meet a lane with no footway, so the crossing is over a verge, not a pavement, and the highway authority still has a say in how it is formed.
The drive itself fails for one reason: it was spread on topsoil. We excavate to a firm formation, lay a geotextile membrane so the stone cannot pump down into soft ground over a wet winter, then build the sub-base up in compacted layers at a depth set by what the hole shows. Loose gravel wants a real edge restraint, timber or a haunched kerb, or it ends up in the hedge.
Coming out forwards onto a lane is worth more than an extra bay, so we set the turning circle out on site with the car you actually own. Anything taking an oil tanker or a horsebox gets a deeper sub-base under it and either concrete or heavy duty block paving, never a thin tarmac skin. Access is the one easy part of a village job: a machine can usually work, and the spoil goes straight into a grab lorry instead of a skip.
The finished level is the thing to get right. The ground in Owermoigne shrinks and swells with the weather, so where the rain finishes up beside a wall is a structural question and not only a damp one. Paving sits clear of the damp proof course and falls away from the wall, and where a back door threshold is already low the answer is a channel drain and a positive outfall, not another lift of hardcore against the brickwork. Steps get risers that all match, because the odd one out is what people trip on, and under an eaves with no gutter we leave a gravel strip for the drip line.
How it runs
Laying a drive on clay ground, stage by stage
Thomas comes out, measures the drive, checks the levels and looks at where the water will run. The quote is itemised: excavation and digging out, muck away, sub base, edgings, the finished surface, and drainage. You keep one point of contact from the dig to the finished drive.
Because we are 22 miles out, the digger, the grab lorry and the aggregate are booked at the survey so they turn up in the right order. On a narrow lane we plan where the lorry stops so the road stays open, and soft verges are boarded. The road is swept every evening and nothing is left as an open hole. An old drain or soakaway uncovered in the dig is photographed and priced before we lay over it.
Dorset Council is the planning authority. A new front surface stays permitted development if rainwater runs onto your own ground or through a permeable surface; above five square metres of impermeable paving that drains onto the road, you need planning permission, as the front garden rules explain. A new or wider crossing needs a dropped kerb application to the highway authority, and it is the slow part. In the conservation area at the centre of Owermoigne, taking down a front wall to open up a drive can need permission. On a listed house, ask about listed building consent first.
Cost
Pricing a drive on clay down a country lane
No driveway is priced fairly by the square metre. The ground, the drainage and getting materials in decide it. The ground. The clay here swells in winter and shrinks back in a dry summer. The dig and the sub base have to be deep enough to stay stable, and a membrane under the sub base stops the clay working up into it.
Where the water goes. A soakaway may not work in clay, because the water has nowhere to go. It may need a channel to a drain, or a permeable surface on a deeper base, as Approved Document H sets out.
Access. A cottage tight on the lane, a house set back behind a long entrance and a bungalow with a wide gate each need a different plan before the digger arrives. At 22 miles out, every extra lorry load of spoil counts.
The surface. Gravel, block paving, tarmac and resin each cost different amounts. On a listed house or in the conservation area, gravel often sits better with the setting.
Ask anyone quoting how deep they excavate, what goes into the sub base, where the surface water ends up, and whether the muck away and the spoil removal are included.
If it is urgent
A drive that has sunk, or water standing by the house
Deal soon with a bay dropped by a doorway, a raised edge someone will trip on, or a gully that no longer takes water. If water is lying against the house, photograph it while it is still wet, because it shows where the fall has failed.
Ring rather than use the form. When we come, we make any trip hazard safe, lift and re-lay a loose slab or block, and find the cause, which on clay is often water trapped under the paving. Scheduled work is Monday to Friday, 8am to 6pm. For the urgent part, phone, and if we miss you we call back.
The one local thing
Ground that shrinks in summer and swells again in winter
The ground around Owermoigne is cohesive, and cohesive ground moves. It shrinks back in a dry summer and takes up water again through the winter, which is why gate posts lean, why a rigid slab laid straight on the subsoil cracks in its third year, and why where you send your rainwater is a structural question, not just a damp one. The practical rule is that surface water should never be tipped into the ground next to a wall.
Soakaways go well clear of the building and are sized on a percolation test done at the depth the crate will actually sit, which is how Approved Document H expects it, not on a guess made in July. Where the ground will not take water, we say so and give it a positive outfall instead, agreed with whoever owns the ditch.
It changes the build as much as the drainage. On moving ground we go deeper on the sub-base and compact it in thin layers, because a well built base spreads the movement instead of concentrating it in one crack. We prefer a flexible surface: block paving or permeable paving can be lifted and relaid in a morning if a corner ever settles, while a concrete or tarmac raft has to be broken out.
Trees and hedges matter too. A mature hedge close to the house dries that ground out hard in summer, so a drive laid tight to it in August is being built at the moving ground's smallest, and we allow for that at the edges.
Who you are dealing with
Who lays your drive, and how far we come
We lay drives across Owermoigne, Crossways, Warmwell and the villages out towards Wool and Lulworth. Our base in Boscombe is 22 miles away, and Dorset Council is the planning authority for all of it.
Thomas Hannen owns it and comes out himself to measure up, check the levels and the drainage, and price it. The company is Bournemouth Roofing & Building Ltd, registered in England and Wales with company number 15471719. Someone whose Checkatrade review was verified scored us 10 out of 10. The site visit costs nothing, and nor does the written quote, with every line itemised. Before you book a visit in Owermoigne, you can read our customers' Google reviews, word for word, on our reviews page.
Planning at a glance
Do you need planning permission in Owermoigne?
Most repairs in Owermoigne 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 Owermoigne |
|---|---|
| Who decides | Dorset Council is the planning authority for Owermoigne. Dorset Council's heritage pages set out what it controls. |
| Conservation area | Yes: Owermoigne Conservation Area. Check whether your street is inside the boundary before changing anything visible. |
| Listed buildings | Yes, there are listed buildings in and around Owermoigne. If yours is one, work can need listed building consent. |
| Protected landscape | No National Park or National Landscape covers Owermoigne. |
Questions
Questions about driveways in Owermoigne
We get more rain out here. Does the build change?
The drainage changes, the paving does not. Owermoigne sits under close to a thousand millimetres of rain a year, so everything is sized for the wet end of the year, not an average one. That means a definite fall instead of a nominal one, a channel at the low point instead of trusting the edge to shed water, and the downpipe and gully cleared while we are there, since most patio flooding starts at a blocked gully.
Does the old concrete go in a skip or a grab?
A grab lorry on a job this size. Broken concrete and dug soil fill a skip quickly, and a skip then stands somewhere for days, which is awkward at an Owermoigne property with a narrow frontage onto the lane. The grab comes once, lifts the heap and goes. Clean hardcore can often stay on site and be crushed into the base of the new drive, which saves a load going off altogether.
Can you build a patio into a garden that slopes?
Yes, and on the sloping plots around Owermoigne that is more often the job than a flat rectangle. The choice is one level with a retaining edge and steps down, or two smaller terraces following the fall. Two terraces are usually the simpler build and they drain better, because you are not holding a bank of wet soil back on ground that shrinks and swells. We set both out on the ground at the visit.
Twenty-two miles out. Do you work it in one visit?
In one run wherever the job allows. Twenty-two miles each way turns into half a day not spent building, so materials come in one delivery and the work runs through until that section is done. Extras added halfway through are what drags a job into a second week. If a path, a step or a bin standing is in your mind as well as the drive, get them on the quote at the start.
What can we check ourselves before you come out?
Walk the drive during heavy rain and photograph where water stands, then look at the same spot dry and find the tide mark. See whether the gully by the downpipe is running or silted, and whether the ground beside the wall stays soft. On the larger plots around Owermoigne the answer is usually a fall going the wrong way rather than a worn out surface, and those are two different jobs with two different prices.
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Free quote
Want a straight price for the drive or the patio?
Tell us what the ground does after rain and we will come and look. Free visit, free itemised written quote, no salesman.