Driveways and patios in Stone

Block paving that has sunk in the wheel tracks. The bread and butter job here. Drives that went down with the brick estates are thirty and forty years old, and most were built with a shallow layer of stone straight onto clay. 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 commonest new 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. On clay that is not a free move, so it is 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.

Parking courts and shared hardstanding. A third of the homes in this corner of BH21 are flats and their parking is communal, which changes how the job runs rather than how it is built. We phase it so nobody loses their space for more than a day, and where the bill falls on leaseholders your managing agent will need to run the consultation that section 20 of the Landlord and Tenant Act 1985 requires, so the quote is written to suit that from the start. 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.

No rate per square metre, because what is under it decides more than what goes on top. A house off one of the lanes where a grab lorry can pull onto the frontage, a terrace on a close where the machine works from the road, and a flat whose parking court has to stay half open are three different jobs. Ground conditions, the depth of the dig and how much muck goes away are the real variables. On clay, where the water is sent is a design decision with a cost. Ask the depth of dig, the sub base, the drainage and who takes the spoil.

We cover Stone, Pamphill, Wimborne Minster, Sturminster Marshall and the BH21 addresses along the Stour, with Dorset Council for planning and building control. Send the postcode if you want to be certain. 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.