Driveways in Sandleheath
Gravel entrances that rut, patios against old walls and drives that hold water, priced in writing after a free visit.
The site visit is free and so is the written itemised quote. Thomas Hannen prices every job himself.
Last updated
We build drives, parking and patios in Sandleheath and around Fordingbridge. Where the house is an older cottage, the finished level against the wall matters more than the surface you choose.
The problems come in three shapes. An old cottage where the path or terrace has crept up the brickwork over the years and the inside wall has started to show it. A long gravel entrance that has rutted and washes stone out onto the road every winter. Or a patio behind a newer detached house that has settled at one end and now keeps a puddle for days.
We come out and dig before we price. What is under the surface, what level the wall can take and where the water goes decide the job, and none of them can be guessed from a photograph. You get an itemised written quote afterwards, and an honest answer about whether yours needs rebuilding or just lifting and relaying.
The work
Cottage margins, long gravel entrances and turning space
Paving up to an old wall. In the older cottages of Sandleheath the brickwork often sits on a soft plinth with the ground close under it, so the worst thing you can do is run a solid surface hard against it.
We take the finished level down, not up, keep it clear of the damp proof course where there is one, fall everything away from the building, and leave a gravel margin along the wall so rain off the roof soaks down instead of splashing back. Where a threshold has to stay usable, a channel drain and a real outfall do the job that another lift of hardcore cannot.
Entrances and gravel that will not stay put. Plots in Sandleheath are wide and a good few drives run some distance in from the road, over a verge rather than a footway, and loose gravel spread on topsoil ruts into two tracks and ends up in the hedge and the gutter. Built properly it is excavated to a firm formation, a geotextile membrane, then a sub-base compacted in layers to the depth the trial hole shows, an edge restraint both sides, and a camber that puts water into a border, never out onto the road. The ground here drains badly, so a soakaway needs a percolation test first and may want a positive outfall instead.
Parking and turning at a detached house. Nearly three in ten homes in Sandleheath are detached, and plenty have room to turn and simply were not laid out to. Getting a car out forwards onto a lane with no footway to see over is worth more than an extra bay, so we set the turning circle out on site with your own vehicle. Anything taking an oil delivery or a horsebox gets a deeper sub-base and either concrete or a heavy duty block, never a thin tarmac skin that ruts where the wheels always stop.
Steps, repairs and the small stuff. Stone flags or porcelain bedded on a full mortar bed and jointed with a mortar that stays in, steps with matched risers, and levels set out before anything is cut; for a terrace, see patios in Sandleheath. We take repairs on their own too: a sunken bay re-laid, a crack across a concrete apron, a re-sand in kiln dried sand, or a gully that has silted up. Working out which single thing has failed is what the site visit is for.
How it runs
Laying a new drive at a Sandleheath house
Thomas walks the frontage, looks at where rain goes now, and digs a trial hole to see what is under the old surface before he prices. The written quote lists excavation, muck away, sub-base, edgings, the surface and drainage separately. The dig, the build up and the laying are all on that price.
On a roadside cottage with a tight frontage the dig may be by hand and barrow. A house set back up a long entrance can take a small digger and a grab lorry. Either way, spoil goes as it comes out, the road is kept clear, and the site is left safe and swept each evening. If the dig finds an old soakaway, a buried pipe or soft ground, the machine waits while you look at a photo and a figure.
New Forest District Council is the planning authority for Sandleheath, and if you are near the National Park boundary, the National Park Authority keeps a property map that settles which authority you deal with. Hard surfacing at the front stays permitted development while the rain soaks away on your land. A larger new area that drains onto the road needs permission, which is the front garden rules in short. Forming or widening an access is a separate highway application, and a dropped kerb takes longest of anything on the job, so it starts first.
Cost
What decides the price of a driveway on these lanes
We do not price a drive by the square metre. What goes under the surface decides more than what goes on top. What is there now. An old concrete drive, tarmac over rubble or a gravelled track all come out differently, and the tonnage of spoil is priced by the load.
The ground. Ground that drains slowly needs thought about where the water goes: a permeable surface, a soakaway or a channel drain. Under the front garden rules that decides whether planning is needed at all.
The type of house. A roadside cottage with little frontage needs the edge set carefully against the road and the house wall, keeping below the damp course. A post-war semi usually has room for a straightforward drive. A later detached house with a long entrance means more sub-base and more edging.
What drives on it. A car needs one depth of stone. A van, a trailer or an oil delivery needs more.
Access. A digger and a grab lorry at the gate is quicker than hand digging and barrowing.
Ask each quote the depth of dig and sub-base, where the surface water goes, whether edgings are included and who takes the spoil.
If it is urgent
A lifted block by the door or a drive that sends water inside
Ring rather than use the form if a block has lifted into a trip, a bay has sunk by a doorway, or a gully has stopped taking water and run-off is heading for the house.
If water is running towards a door, ring while it is happening, because watching where it runs tells us more than anything measured later. Cone off or cover the hazard in the meantime. The first visit makes it safe, then the proper repair is priced once we know whether the sub-base has failed. We work Monday to Friday, 8am to 6pm on booked jobs. If nobody answers, expect a call back.
The one local thing
Building against a house that never had a damp proof course
A house put up before about 1900 usually has no damp proof course in it at all. It was built to take a bit of water and let it back out through soft brick and lime mortar, and it stays dry as long as the ground outside is lower than the floor inside and the wall can breathe.
Damp in an old cottage in Sandleheath very often starts outside, not in: a path re-laid a little higher each time, a concrete apron poured tight against the plinth, or a smart new patio finished level with the back door. Once the outside ground is up near the floor, water has an easy route across and no way out.
So on those houses we work downwards. The ground beside the wall comes off and never gets built up, the finished paving sits a good two courses below the internal floor, and the fall runs away from the building on every side. Along the wall itself we leave a permeable margin, gravel over a land drain taken to a proper outfall, so nothing seals the base of the brickwork. Bedding and pointing stay soft, never a hard cement mix that traps moisture in the wall.
Where the ground is slow to take water, and much of it here is, that outfall matters more than the soakaway: Approved Document H expects a percolation test at the depth the crates would sit, and if the answer is no, the water needs somewhere else to go. If your cottage is listed, and a couple here are, that consent question is settled before a spade goes in the ground.
Who you are dealing with
The firm quoting drives across Sandleheath and SP6
We lay drives across Sandleheath, Fordingbridge, Alderholt, Rockbourne and the SP6 villages up the Avon valley. We are 14 miles away, at 80a Wolverton Road in Boscombe, and New Forest District Council deals with planning.
Your contract is with Bournemouth Roofing & Building Ltd, company number 15471719, registered in England and Wales. The owner, Thomas Hannen, digs the trial hole and prices the drive himself. A customer verified by Checkatrade gave us 10 out of 10. We come out and look for free, and the itemised written quote is also free. Before you book a visit in Sandleheath, you can read our customers' Google reviews, word for word, on our reviews page.
Planning at a glance
Do you need planning permission in Sandleheath?
Most repairs in Sandleheath 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.
| Question | In Sandleheath |
|---|---|
| Who decides | New Forest District Council is the planning authority for Sandleheath. The National Park boundary runs close by, and the Park's property map shows which side an address falls. |
| Conservation area | None covers Sandleheath, so a like-for-like repair is ordinary maintenance. |
| Listed buildings | Yes, Sandleheath has listed buildings. If yours is one, or stands in the grounds of one, work can need listed building consent. |
| Protected landscape | No National Park or National Landscape covers Sandleheath. |
Questions
Questions about driveways in Sandleheath
Why does the lawn stay wet where the drive drains onto it?
Because the ground here has impeded drainage and will not take water away as fast as a hard surface delivers it. Every square yard you pave has to send its rain somewhere, and tipping it onto grass that is already holding water only moves the puddle. On Sandleheath plots we either build permeable, with a stone reservoir under the surface doing the storing, or pipe the run to an outfall. A percolation test settles which of those it is.
Our cottage has no damp course. Where does new paving finish?
Below the inside floor, with a gap left along the wall. An older cottage here usually has solid walls, and a solid wall of that age gets rid of moisture by breathing rather than by a barrier. Butt a new slab against it at door height and the wall is bridged. We drop the paving, run a free draining margin or a channel along the building, and fall the surface away from it.
Can a long gravel entrance be made to stay put?
Loose stone on a slope migrates, and it ends up in the ditch and out on the road. What stops it is a bound edge and a cellular grid, so the gravel sits down in the cells and locks together while still looking like gravel. Nearly three in ten properties around Sandleheath are detached with long entrances, and raking stone back up the slope every winter is nobody's idea of a garden.
Who approves a new opening onto the road?
The highway authority, not the planners. A new or widened crossing over the footway is a separate application from anything the planning side of New Forest deals with, and it gets inspected before and after. Resurfacing an opening that already exists needs none of it. Plenty of frontages at Sandleheath have a crossing that was cut for a smaller car than people drive now, and that is the part that adds time to the job.
Will the front garden be churned up by machines?
Some of it, and it is better to plan the route than pretend otherwise. Tracked plant runs on boards where it crosses grass, and the arisings leave the same way the stone came in rather than across the whole frontage. Fourteen miles out from our base we bring what is needed in one go instead of running back and forth, which keeps the movements down. Anything lifted out of the way, a gate or a bed edging, goes back.
Nearby, and next door
Driveways near Sandleheath
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Free quote
Want a straight price for the drive or the terrace?
Tell us what the ground does after rain and we will come and dig a hole in it. Free visit, free itemised written quote, no salesman.