Driveways 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.

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. For a patio or garden paving, see patios in Ringwood. 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.

We do not quote by the square metre, because the ground under a drive matters more than the surface on top.

The ground. On clay that moves with the seasons, the dig goes deeper and the sub base thicker, and every extra load of spoil means more muck away and more fresh stone.

The site. A terraced house in the old centre with a small frontage on the pavement, a post-war semi with a straight run in from the road, and a shared parking court behind a block of flats are planned in very different ways. Where a digger cannot get in, the dig is done by hand, which takes longer.

Water. Block paving on a permeable sub base, a linear drain across the entrance, or a soakaway all cost differently, and on clay a soakaway may not drain at all.

The surface. Block paving, tarmac, resin bound and gravel each need their own base and edging.

The kerb. A new or wider entrance needs Hampshire County Council's approval for a dropped kerb, and that is a line of its own.

Ask anyone else how deep they will dig, what sub base and how thick, where the water goes, and who takes the spoil away.

We are based in Boscombe, 8 miles from Ringwood, and lay drives across BH24: the town centre, Poulner and Hightown, Ashley Heath, Hangersley and Burley. New Forest District Council handles planning, and Hampshire County Council the highway.

Bournemouth Roofing & Building Ltd is registered in England and Wales, company number 15471719. The ground is walked by Thomas Hannen, who owns the firm, before he puts a price on it. Our Checkatrade page carries a verified 10 out of 10 from a customer. There is no charge for the visit, and none for the itemised written quote. Before you book a visit in Ringwood, you can read our customers' Google reviews, word for word, on our reviews page.

Most repairs in Ringwood 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.