Driveways and patios in Ringwood

Front gardens turned into parking. On the older streets the frontage is small, walled and hard up against the footway, so the whole job happens in a few square metres and every detail shows. We take the wall down to the width you need and rebuild the ends as piers, excavate to a formation a car can stand on, lay a geotextile membrane and a sub-base compacted in layers, then finish in block paving, resin bound or a stone border with something plainer inside it. The finished level has to tie into the footway at one end and stay below the damp proof course at the other, and there is usually only one way of making both work at once.

Estate drives that have come to the end. A third of the housing round the town went up between 1945 and 1982, laid in thin concrete or tarmac over very little, and they fail the same way: a crack that widens every winter, a sunken bay where the car stands, rutting along an edge that never had a restraint. Where the old concrete is flat and sound, resin bound over the top saves the dig. Where it has broken up, breaking it out and getting the depth back is the only honest answer, and we will tell you which of the two you have.

Back yards reached through the house. Plenty of town centre properties have no side gate a machine will fit through, so the spoil comes out by barrow along a hall or a shared alley and onto a grab lorry. That changes the programme rather than the design, and the handling and the disposal sit on the quote as their own lines. Close to three in ten homes in Ringwood are flats, and their parking is often a court of block paving that has rutted where vehicles turn in and ponds at the low end. Those relay well: lift the affected bays, correct the falls, re-sand the joints and haunch the edge that has spread. The awkward part is rarely the work, it is agreeing who owns the ground and who is placing the order.

Patios, steps and thresholds. Porcelain, natural stone and pressed concrete all sit on the same build up, and all of them rock and pond if they were bedded on five dabs instead of a full mortar bed. We relay on a compacted sub-base, point the joints so they stop washing out, fall the surface away from the house and keep it clear of the threshold. Where the garden will not give us the drop, a gravel border or a channel drain along the wall does the same job. The ground here is cohesive and moves with the seasons, so where a drive sends its water is a question about the foundation and not only about the paving. One sunken bay, a lifted slab by a door or a silted gully is hours rather than days, and we would rather price that than sell you a drive you do not need yet.

No rate per square metre, because what is under it decides more than what goes on top. A terraced frontage on the pavement, a post-war semi with a straight run in and a flat over a shared parking court are three different jobs before anybody lifts a slab. Ground conditions, the depth of the dig and how much muck goes away are the real variables. Surface water has to be dealt with on your own ground rather than run into the road. Ask the depth of dig, the sub base, the drainage and who takes the spoil away.

We cover Ringwood and the rest of BH24, out through Poulner and Hightown to Ashley Heath, Hangersley, Burley and the villages either side of the Avon. 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.