Driveways and patios in Poole

Turning a front garden into parking. On the older streets the house sits close to the pavement and there is nothing at the back, so the front garden is the only parking there will ever be. The paving is the quick part. Forming the crossing sets the date, because it is a highway application, the kerb and the footway are rebuilt to their specification, and the service covers in the path have to be dealt with properly. Behind it the bay wants a haunched kerb line and an edge restraint, or block paving creeps sideways under a turning wheel, with a planted border left along the wall so the rain has somewhere to soak away on your land.

Inter-war and 1930s drives. A lot of Poole was built between the wars, and the original drives were two concrete strips or a thin skim of tarmac laid straight onto the ground. They fail in the same order every time: a crack down each wheel track, rutting where the car swings in off the road, and the surface breaking up at the garage threshold where water has stood. If the concrete underneath is still flat and solid, resin bound over the top is a two day job with no dig and almost no muck away. If it rocks under your foot it comes out, the formation is re-cut and the sub-base rebuilt on a geotextile membrane in compacted layers. This is wet ground, so a soakaway wants a percolation test before anyone draws one.

Shared forecourts and parking courts. A third of the homes in the town are flats, and a lot of them share a tarmac apron, a bin store slab and a run of communal parking that nobody has touched since it was laid. That work is worth doing in one go: the whole area to one fall, a channel drain across the entrance instead of a puddle, and bays marked out so the same cars stop blocking the gate. Where leaseholders are being charged for it, the freeholder has to consult under section 20 of the Landlord and Tenant Act 1985 once one leaseholder's share passes the statutory limit, so we write the quote in a form that can go straight out with that notice.

At the back, porcelain on a full mortar bed, natural stone flags, or block paving you can lift and relay later. Whatever goes down finishes below the damp proof course and falls away from the house, and a low back door threshold gets a channel drain and an outfall rather than another lift of build up against the wall. Small courtyards get the level changes and steps set out first, because that is where a garden either works or annoys you daily. On their own we also do the repairs: a sunken bay, a lifted flag, weed through open joints, pointing washed out of a stone terrace, or a gully that has stopped taking water.

In the older streets the crossing sets both the price and the date, because rebuilding kerb and footway is a highway job before it is a paving one. A terrace fronting the pavement, a semi with a narrow side alley and a block of flats with a shared entrance are three different jobs before a machine turns a wheel. The ground under the town is wet, so how the surface water is dealt with is designed rather than assumed. Comparing quotes, ask the dig depth, the sub base, the drainage, and who takes the spoil away.

We cover Poole town, the harbour side streets and out through Parkstone, Hamworthy, Broadstone and Upton, six miles from us and daily ground. 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.