Driveways and patios in Rockbourne

Gravel frontages that keep moving. Loose stone is the right surface for most houses here and the wrong one if it is simply tipped on the ground. Without an edge restraint it walks out onto the verge and the street, and without a compacted sub-base it presses in until there is rutting in the wheel tracks and ponding after rain. Built properly it is a strip out, a geotextile membrane at formation, sub-base compacted in layers, a haunched edging or a brick-on-edge border, then gravel in a grid so the stone stays where it was raked. Where you want something that stays swept, resin bound over a sound base gives the same look with a harder surface.

Doorsteps and flint plinths. The older cottages along here have their floors close to the ground outside and a plinth of flint or brick at the base of the wall. Every surface laid over the last one lifts the level a little more, and once the outside is higher than the floor inside the wall holds damp. We dig down rather than build up, finish the paving clear of the wall, and where the ground will not give us the drop we run a gravel margin or a channel drain along the base. Those walls are bedded in lime, so we hand dig alongside them, support anything already leaning before the ground beside it is opened, and rebed what comes down in a matching lime mix rather than a strong grey cement.

Tracks and shared entrances off the lanes. A rutted track is usually a drainage problem wearing a surface problem's clothes: water runs down the ruts, softens the formation and the ruts deepen. The fix is a crossfall so water leaves the track rather than running along it, a gully where it meets the road, and a stone build up chosen for what actually uses it, which out here often includes a tractor or an oil delivery. Old flags bedded on five dabs rock, crack and pond within a couple of winters, so we relay on a full mortar bed over a compacted sub-base, with the jointing pointed rather than filled with a kiln dried sand that washes out and lets weed and green staining take hold.

Water, and where it is not allowed to go. Part of the village sits in flood zones 2 and 3 with Sweatfords Water a few metres away, and you can check any address on the government flood risk service. Near water the design changes: no new hard surface tipping run off towards the channel, permeable construction where the ground will take it, and levels set so the water leaves the buildings first.

No rate per square metre, because what is under it decides more than what goes on top. A thatched cottage with nowhere to stand a lorry, a farmhouse at the top of a long gravel track and a house with an open frontage you can back onto 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, because out here the muck away is often a grab lorry in a passing place and the disposal that follows it. Surface water has to stay on your own land. Ask the depth of dig, the sub base, the drainage and who takes the spoil away.

We cover Rockbourne and the villages around it in SP6, from Fordingbridge and Sandleheath across to Damerham, Whitsbury and Martin, and down the Avon valley towards Ringwood. 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.