Driveways in Post Green

Level access at a bungalow door. A lot of the housing around Post Green is single storey, and a bungalow puts its threshold low, often only a course or two above the outside ground.

That is where damp at a bungalow usually starts: a patio or a path built up over the years until it bridges the damp proof course. The fix is not more paving. It is taking the level back down, keeping the finished surface clear of the damp proof course, falling it away from the wall, and running a channel drain across the doorway with somewhere real for the water to go. Where the threshold has to stay flush for a wheelchair or a frame, that channel and its outfall are the whole design.

Frontages that could hold two cars. Plots in Post Green are wide and shallow, and a lot of them still have the original single strip up to a garage with grass or gravel either side. Widening one is mostly groundwork: excavate to a firm formation, geotextile membrane, sub-base compacted in layers to a depth the trial hole sets, then a haunched kerb or edge restraint so nothing spreads. Getting turning space in matters more than squeezing in a third bay, because coming out forwards stops the verge being churned every time somebody visits.

Most of this housing went up between the late 1960s and the early 1980s, and the drives are of their time: bay concrete with joints that have opened, thin tarmac that ruts, or block paving that has dropped at the crossover. Sound concrete can take resin bound straight over it, which skips the dig entirely. Anything moving underfoot comes up and is rebuilt properly, and the spoil leaves on a grab lorry the same day rather than sitting in a skip on the verge for a fortnight. The ground drains slowly here, so a soakaway wants a percolation test rather than an assumption.

Patios go on a full mortar bed in porcelain, natural stone or block paving you can lift and relay later, with steps that have matched risers and a jointing mortar that stays put instead of brushed sand that washes into the border. For that side of the work, see patios in Post Green. On its own we also do the small stuff: one sunken bay, a rocking slab, cracked pointing, a silted gully, or a re-sand and re-level of paving that has dipped. That is often the honest answer.

Levels at the threshold. A bungalow's front door is often only a step above the drive. The surface has to fall away from the house and sit below the damp proof course, so the drainage is the design here, not an extra.

The ground. Clay drains slowly and moves with the seasons. That usually means a deeper dig, more sub-base compacted in layers, and a permeable surface or channel drain taking water to a soakaway, which Approved Document H covers. It is also more muck away, charged by weight.

What is there now. Breaking out an old concrete drive and carting it away costs more than stripping turf.

The surface. Block paving, permeable block, tarmac, resin bound gravel and loose gravel each price differently. Permeable surfaces need an open-graded base, which is deeper.

Edges. On moving ground, block paving needs edgings haunched in concrete, or it spreads.

The kerb. If the drive needs a wider opening, the dropped kerb is a separate application and a separate cost, paid to the highway authority.

When you compare quotes, ask how deep the dig is, what sub-base is going in, where the water is being taken, and whether the edgings are haunched.

Post Green lies about nine and a half miles west of our base in Boscombe. We lay drives in Post Green, Lytchett Minster, Upton, Holton Heath and out to Lytchett Matravers, in BH16 and under Dorset Council.

Bournemouth Roofing & Building Ltd is registered in England and Wales as company number 15471719. Thomas Hannen, who owns it, measures the frontage and prices the drive himself. A verified customer gave us 10 out of 10 on Checkatrade. The visit is free, and so is the written quote with each item listed. Before you book a visit in Post Green, you can read our customers' Google reviews, word for word, on our reviews page.

Most repairs in Post Green 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.