Driveways in Stone
Sunken block paving lifted and relaid, rutted tarmac, patios that pond against the house and drives widened for a second car, across Stone and the BH21 lanes.
The site visit is free and so is the written itemised quote. Thomas Hannen prices every job himself.
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Most failed drives around Stone have gone from underneath, not on top. The blocks or the slabs themselves are usually still sound. What has gone is the sub-base under them, laid too thin and never compacted in layers, so the wheel tracks sink and the rest stays put. Lifting the surface, digging down to a firm formation and rebuilding the base is the honest answer here far more often than a brand new surface is.
A drive at Stone needs work when it dips, when the patio falls back to the house or when it must take a second car. A dip where the car stands, deep enough that water sits in it and finds the front door. A patio that has settled the wrong way over the years, so rain now runs back towards the wall of the house instead of away from it. And a single width drive that has to take a second car, with a hedge on one side and no obvious place for the water to go once the front garden is hard.
All three are ordinary work and none of them needs to start with a demolition. We come out, dig a small hole in the corner of the drive to see what is actually under it, and tell you whether you are buying a repair, a relay or a rebuild. The site visit and the written itemised quote both cost nothing.
The work
Drives, garden paths and wider frontages around Stone
Block paving that has sunk in the wheel tracks. The usual failure on drives here. Many older drives were built with a shallow layer of stone laid straight onto the ground, with nothing between the two.
We lift the blocks by hand and stack them, because the same blocks nearly always go back down. The dig goes to a proper formation, a geotextile membrane goes between the ground and the stone so the two cannot pump into one another, and the sub-base goes back in layers, each one compacted before the next. If the pattern has spread over the years it is the edge restraint that gave way, so the edgings are reset and haunched in concrete before anything else goes back.
Concrete and tarmac from the same era. Concrete cracks along the day joints and lifts where a root has got under it; tarmac goes brittle at the unsupported edges, then ruts where the car turns. An overlay is sometimes a fair answer and sometimes throwing money away, and the test is simple. If the base is still firm and only the surface has tired, an overlay works. If the panel rocks when you stand on the edge of it, covering it just moves the problem up by forty millimetres. We will say which one you have got before you have paid for anything.
Widening for a second car is the other kind of work here: taking out a length of border and low wall, matching the surface across the new bay, and deciding where the extra water goes. The river gravel here usually drains well once tested, so it is often a permeable build up, a channel drain into a soakaway, or a gravel border that takes the run off. A vehicle crossing over the footway is a dropped kerb application to the county highways team.
Older frontages and garden paths. Much of Pamphill is part of the National Trust's Kingston Lacy estate, and many homes around Stone are older cottages and houses set along the lanes, where a path, a gravel sweep or a brick edge has been patched for years. We keep what is sound, match it where it can be matched, and rebuild only what has failed. Patios go on the same rules as the drive: a full mortar bed, the fall away from the building, and the level clear of the damp proof course; see patios in Stone for that side.
How it runs
Laying a drive or parking area, from dig to finish
Thomas comes to walk the frontage, takes levels, and looks at where rain goes at the moment and where the drains, stopcock and manhole covers sit. In Stone the job could be a gravel drive in front of an older cottage, the front of a later house, or a path along a lane frontage, and each one starts from a different base.
His quote breaks it into digging out, carting the spoil, the sub base, edgings, the surface itself, drainage and any kerb work. The work runs in order: excavate, build up the base, lay the surface and clean the road afterwards. A drive shared with a neighbour is done in halves so there is always somewhere to park, and deliveries down a lane are timed to keep the road open. The site is fenced or taped each night and spoil leaves on the lorry. If the dig finds a collapsed drain or a pocket of soft ground, you are shown it with a price, and that part waits for your agreement.
Paving your own front garden is normally permitted development, and the test is surface water: over five square metres it has to be permeable or drain onto your own land, as the front garden paving rules explain. Let it run into the road and you need permission. That right is for houses. Flats and maisonettes have no permitted development rights for hard surfacing, so paving in front of a flat needs planning permission. Crossing the verge is a matter for Dorset Council as highway authority. Some of the listed entries in Stone are boundary walls and gate piers, so on an old frontage we check whether listed building consent applies first.
Cost
Ground, drainage and access in a drive price
The ground underneath sets the dig. Stone sits on river terrace sand and gravel beside the Stour. The dig still has to go through the topsoil to a firm formation, and the depth of it and the spoil it makes are the largest single part of most drive prices here.
Rainwater. Terrace gravel usually takes water well, so a soakaway or a permeable build-up often works once a percolation test proves it. Where it does not, a linear drain goes somewhere that can accept it, and water is never pushed towards the house. Approved Document H is the standard for dealing with it.
Access. A house off a lane where a grab lorry can pull straight onto the frontage is the easy case. A cottage on a narrow lane means working from the road, and a drive shared with a neighbour has to stay partly open throughout.
Size and surface. A long drive to a house set back from the lane is a bigger area with more edging and more drainage, and often suits gravel or tarmac. Resin, gravel in a grid and block paving each need a different base.
Shared access. Where a drive or track serves more than one house, the quote can be set out so each owner sees their own share.
Ask other quotes the depth of dig, the sub base and its thickness, how the drainage works, and who takes the spoil.
If it is urgent
A trip hazard on the drive or water running at the house
A lifted block or slab is a trip, and a sunken bay by a door or a gully that has stopped taking water sends water back at the house. On a shared drive or track, tell your neighbours too, because a trip there affects everyone who uses it.
Give us a ring rather than using the form. We make it safe on the first visit, re-bed the worst of it if that can be done, or cut a temporary channel to take water away from the wall; the permanent repair is priced after. Groundwork is booked Monday to Friday, 8am to 6pm. For anything urgent, ring, and if nobody can answer, we call back as soon as we can.
Worth knowing
What is under the drive decides how long it lasts
The ground around Stone is river terrace sand and gravel, which drains freely, but the topsoil and the loose layer above it will not carry a car. Under a lawn that does not matter. Under a drive it decides everything.
A surface laid on a token scraping of stone over soft ground settles unevenly under the wheels and cracks or dips within a few seasons.
It is why the depth of the dig, the geotextile membrane between ground and stone, and compacting the sub-base in layers rather than all in one go are not upsell items on this ground. They are the job. Ask anybody quoting you how deep they are digging and what is going back in, and if the answer is vague, that is your answer.
The second half of it is where the water ends up. Gravel usually takes water away well, but low ground near a river can hold water in a wet winter, and a soakaway that stays full next to a wall is a damp problem rather than a puddle. Anything infiltrating should be proved with a percolation test rather than assumed, kept well away from the house, and sized properly. Approved Document H is the standard that sits behind all of that, and it is why we will sometimes tell you the honest answer is a positive outfall to an existing surface water drain instead.
If there are mature trees near the frontage, be careful in both directions: do not send new run off at their roots, and do not seal the ground over them completely either. Getting the water wrong near a house or a tree is the one decision on a driveway that can cost more than the driveway.
Who you are dealing with
The firm that would build your drive
We cover Stone, Pamphill, Wimborne Minster, Sturminster Marshall and the BH21 addresses along the Stour. Our base in Boscombe is about nine miles away. Dorset Council deals with planning, building control and the highway. Registered in England and Wales, Bournemouth Roofing & Building Ltd carries company number 15471719. Before you book a visit in Stone, you can read our customers' Google reviews, word for word, on our reviews page.
It is owned by Thomas Hannen, who measures the ground and prices the drive himself. On Checkatrade, a verified customer marked us 10 out of 10. There is no fee for the site visit, and the written quote, with every item listed, is free as well.
Planning at a glance
Do you need planning permission in Stone?
Most repairs in Stone 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 Stone |
|---|---|
| Who decides | Dorset Council is the planning authority for Stone. Dorset Council's heritage pages set out what it controls. |
| Conservation area | None covers Stone, so a like-for-like repair is ordinary maintenance. |
| Listed buildings | Yes, there are listed buildings in and around Stone. If yours is one, work can need listed building consent. |
| Protected landscape | No National Park or National Landscape covers Stone. |
Questions
Questions about driveways in Stone
The drive has dropped where the car stands. Why there?
A drive drops where the car stands because that is where the load is, and where the base under it was laid too thin, the wheel positions consolidate first. Lifting that patch and packing it up buys you a flat drive for a while, but the material under it is still too shallow.
The repair that holds is to take the bay out, dig deeper, rebuild in compacted layers and relay the same blocks on top of it.
Where do we park while the drive is dug up?
In sections where the drive is wide enough, so you are not without a space for the whole job. A drive shared with a neighbour gets taken in halves: dig, base and surface one side, open it up, then cross over. That adds a day or two to the programme. The alternative is finding somewhere else for everyone to leave a car for a week, which never works.
Is resin the wrong choice on ground that moves?
It is the least forgiving of the options. Resin is a continuous surface bonded to a base, so when the ground beneath shifts the surface has to crack somewhere instead of moving at a joint. Block is jointed, which means it absorbs small movement without showing it, and a failed patch lifts and relays with the same blocks. Where a trial hole at Stone finds soft ground, that flexibility is worth more than the neater finish.
What do you actually check on the site visit?
Levels first, with a laser: where water goes now, where the thresholds sit and how much fall there is to the road. Then a hole through the existing surface, because an older drive at Stone can have six inches of stone under it or none at all. Then access, turning space and where a lorry can stand. Thomas does all of that himself and the figures come off it.
The edges have spread and blocks are loose. Fix or relay?
Edges are usually a repair. Blocks work loose because the edge restraint has moved, and once the restraint goes the whole field creeps towards it and every joint opens. Resetting the kerb or edging on a concrete haunch and re-sanding pulls the lot back tight again. If the field has dipped as well, that is a separate job, and the two get set out as separate items so one can be done now.
Nearby, and next door
Driveways near Stone
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Free quote
Get a written price for your Stone driveway or patio
Send the postcode and tell us what the drive is doing. We come out, open a hole to see what is under it, and put the price in writing with the days it will take.