Driveways and patios in Spetisbury
Roadside parking, worn out drives and patios 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.
How you get on and off the carriageway shapes a Spetisbury drive as much as the surface does, because the village is strung out along a main road. We lay drives, parking and patios here and through the DT11 villages along the Stour.
Most calls are one of three. Somewhere to pull off the road at a house that has only ever had a verge or a strip of gravel. An old surface that has broken up along the wheel tracks and now throws loose material out onto the tarmac. Or a garden terrace that has settled, holds water in one corner and has gone slippery in the shade.
Before anything is priced we dig a trial hole, take levels off the house, and stand at the exit to see what you can actually see when you pull out. Then you get one written quote with the dig, the muck away, the base, the edgings, the surface and the drainage on separate lines.
The work
Pull-ins off the road, old boundary walls and settled terraces
Making a place to park at the roadside. Plenty of houses along the village have no frontage worth the name, so parking means taking in part of a garden or firming up a worn verge. The paving is the easy half. Forming the crossing sets the date, because it is a highway application, the edge detail belongs to the highway authority, and the first metre or two of your drive has to hold a car without spilling stone back onto the road. That first stretch gets a bound surface and a haunched kerb line every time.
Openings through an old wall. There is a good deal of old brick and flint boundary walling about the village and eighteen listed entries near it. Cutting a gap through a wall like that is bricklaying, not paving: the reveal has to be rebuilt into proper piers, tied and capped, or the wall each side leans within a couple of winters. If the wall belongs to a listed building it is a consent question first, and walls and gates next to a highway are worth reading where a new gate is going in near the carriageway.
Half the housing here went up between the 1940s and the early 1980s, and those drives are bay concrete or a thin tarmac skim laid on the subsoil. They crack along the wheel tracks and break up at the garage threshold. Sound concrete takes resin bound straight over it with no dig. Anything that rocks comes out and the sub-base is rebuilt in compacted layers before the surface goes back.
On its own we will also do the small work: a sunken bay, a rocking slab, pointing washed out of a terrace, a re-sand in kiln dried sand, or a silted gully given a proper outfall, with the finished level always clear of the damp proof course.
How it runs
From your call to a written price
One person to ring, and the quote itemised: excavation, muck away, sub base, edgings, surface and drainage on separate lines. Dorset Council is the planning authority for Spetisbury, and with eighteen listed entries about the village listed building consent is worth a call before anything is altered at the front of a period property. Paving at the front is permitted development while the water stays on your land, and more than five square metres of sealed surface draining onto the road needs planning permission, which is the front garden rules in short. A vehicle crossing over the verge is applied for separately, and it is the slowest part of the job, so it starts first.
Cost
What decides the price of a driveway
No rate per square metre, because what is under it decides more than what goes on top. A cottage hard against the road, a semi on one of the lanes behind and a house down towards the river are three different jobs before a machine turns a wheel. 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 the property rather than run into the road. Ask the depth of dig, the sub base, the drainage and who takes the spoil away.
If it is urgent
A trip hazard, or a drive that floods
Ring rather than use the form. A lifted slab, a sunken bay by a doorway or a gully that has stopped taking water will not wait, because somebody falls or water ends up against the house. Loose material washing out onto the carriageway is the one to ring about quickly, because it becomes a hazard for other people. The phone is answered 24 hours for emergencies; scheduled work runs Monday to Friday, 8am to 6pm.
The one local thing
Coming out onto the main road, safely and legally
The A350 runs the length of the village, and that single fact changes more about a drive here than the ground does. Reversing out onto a road that traffic moves along at speed is the thing to design out, so we lay the turning space out on site with the car you own rather than a figure from a book, and we would rather lose a parking bay than leave you backing onto the carriageway.
Sight lines matter as much as space: what you can see when you are sitting in the driver's seat, not standing on the verge. Gates get set back far enough that a car can be off the road while they open, and they open inwards. The highway authority will have its own requirements for the crossing itself, which is the part of the application that takes the time and the reason we start it the day you say yes.
It also decides the surface at the road end. Loose gravel is a poor neighbour to a busy road: it gets thrown out under tyres, washes into the gutter and ends up somebody else's problem. Even where the rest of the drive is going to be gravel, we bind the first stretch, usually resin bound or block paving on a haunched edge, so nothing migrates onto the tarmac. Drainage runs the same way.
Water off your drive cannot be sent out to the highway drain, so it goes to a permeable surface, a border or a soakaway inside your boundary, with a channel drain across the entrance if the ground falls that way. Deliveries are handled around the traffic too: smaller loads, nothing tipped in the road, and the spoil away on a grab lorry rather than a skip standing on a main road for a week.
Who you are dealing with
A local firm you can check
We cover Spetisbury, Charlton Marshall, Blandford, Bryanston and the DT11 villages along the Stour, about thirteen miles from us. 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.
Questions
Spetisbury questions we get asked
We share the drive with next door. Who authorises the work?
Both of you, in writing, before a spade goes in. Over half the homes in Spetisbury are semis or terraces, and a lot of the accesses here are shared strips with a right of way rather than a boundary down the middle. If one owner pays and the other objects at the halfway point, the job stops with the ground open. We set each half out on the same quote so the split is obvious from the start.
There are old buildings along the street. Does that limit materials?
Spetisbury has no conservation area, so the material is your choice, but there are eighteen listed entries in the parish and the rules change if one of them is your house or your boundary wall. Outside that, the real limit is levels rather than planning. A frontage sitting below the road needs the water sorted before anyone decides between block, gravel and a bound surface, because the surface will not fix a fall that runs the wrong way.
The concrete drive has lifted at the joints. Can it be patched?
Patching concrete rarely holds, because the slab has moved rather than worn. Half of Spetisbury was built between the mid forties and the early eighties, most heavily in the late sixties and early seventies, and drives of that vintage are thin unreinforced slabs poured onto whatever happened to be there. Once one bay tips, the neighbouring joints open in turn. Breaking out and rebuilding the ground underneath is what stops the cycle.
Where do the skip and the materials stand during the job?
On your own ground if there is room for them, and on the road with a permit from Dorset if there is not. A skip on the highway needs that permit and needs lighting, and on the through road at Spetisbury it has to be arranged rather than assumed. We would rather use a grab lorry for the dig out, which loads and goes the same day instead of leaving a skip outside for a week.
How many days before we can park on it again?
Block paving can be driven on as soon as it is jointed and compacted, so the drive is out of use during the dig and the laying rather than afterwards. Concrete and resin both need curing time before a car goes near them. Spetisbury is a shade under thirteen miles from the yard, so we work full days here, and you get told which day the surface goes down so parking can be arranged.
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