Driveways in Parkstone

New parking in a front garden. On the older terraces and villas the front garden is often the only place a car will ever go. The paving is the quick part.

The crossing is the slow part, because a new or wider dropped kerb is an application to BCP Council as highway authority, and the footway is rebuilt to their specification. Where the garden sits above the pavement, the bay is cut in and a retaining wall built either side. Where it sits below, the drive is built up and ramped, and the gradient at the crossing has to suit a car that does not ground out.

Taking out a failed drive. The inter-war and post-war semis further up the hill in Parkstone were often given two concrete strips or a thin tarmac, laid onto whatever was there. They fail the same way: a crack along each wheel track, rutting where the car turns in, and a sunken patch where water has stood. If the old slab is flat and solid, resin bound can go over it with almost no dig. If it rocks, it comes out. The formation is cut back to firm ground, a geotextile membrane goes down, and the sub-base goes in compacted layers to a depth that suits the ground and the load.

Block paving. Still the most forgiving surface on a Parkstone slope, because a block that has settled can be lifted and relaid without cutting a scar through the drive. It needs a firm edge restraint haunched in concrete, or the blocks creep sideways and downhill. Joints are filled with kiln dried sand and topped up after the first few weeks as it settles in. Permeable block, with open joints and a free draining base, is the easiest way to keep the water on your own land.

Resin bound, tarmac and concrete. Resin bound is porous, quiet in colour and fine on a moderate slope, but it needs a sound, dry base and is laid in one go. Tarmac is quick and takes a turning wheel well. Pattern imprinted concrete is hard wearing but cannot be patched invisibly, and it is not permeable, so the drainage has to be designed in. Loose gravel we would talk you out of on any real gradient, because it washes and walks downhill onto the pavement.

Shared forecourts at flats. Parkstone has a lot of flats, many in big houses split up and some in small purpose-built blocks, and the frontage is usually shared. We price that as one job laid to one fall, with bays set out and a channel drain across the entrance, in a form the freeholder can send out under section 20 where the leaseholders pay. Flats have no permitted development rights for paving, so a new hard surface there needs planning.

Repairs. A sunken bay, a lifted kerb, blocks rocking by the gate, weed through open joints, a gully that has stopped taking water, or a drive that has spread at the edges. These are usually a day or two, and we will say so rather than sell you a new drive.

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.

Paving a front garden in Parkstone is permitted development for a house if the surface is permeable or the water drains onto your own ground, and needs planning if more than five square metres of sealed surface runs to the road. A dropped kerb is a separate highway application. Inside Ashley Cross conservation area, taking down a front wall or piers can need consent too, and 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. On a drive that falls towards the house, water standing at the garage door or against the front wall is the one to ring about first, before it finds the damp course. 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

Parkstone is built on a hill. The ground climbs from Lower Parkstone and the harbour edge up to Ashley Road and Constitution Hill, and plenty of front gardens sit well above or below the pavement. That changes the water, the bank and the surface on a drive. The first is water.

A Parkstone drive that falls towards the house brings every storm to the front door, so it needs a channel drain across the bottom with a proper outfall, and the surface must finish below the damp course. A drive that falls to the road cannot just dump its water on the footway, which is where a permeable build or a soakaway comes in.

The second is the bank. Cutting a parking bay into a raised Parkstone front garden means holding the soil back with a retaining wall, and that wall is structure, not edging, so it is designed for the load of the ground and a car behind it. If the dig comes close to next door's foundations, the Party Wall Act excavation rules can mean serving notice first. The third is the surface. On a real gradient we steer you to block paving or a textured resin that holds a tyre in the wet, and away from gravel and smooth concrete. We take levels on the first visit so the quote already allows for all of this.

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

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