Driveways and patios in Tolpuddle
Gravel entrances that hold their stone, old brick and flag paving lifted and relaid, and patios set at a level an old wall can live with, across Tolpuddle and DT2.
The site visit is free and so is the written itemised quote. Thomas Hannen prices every job himself.
In Tolpuddle the question is almost never which surface. It is how much ground you are allowed to make hard, where the water is going to go afterwards, and what height the paving is allowed to finish at where it meets an old wall. Settle those three at the survey and the rest, whether it is gravel, block paving, stone, porcelain, resin or tarmac, is ordinary work.
People here ring us about a short list of things. A gravel entrance off the street that has worn through to bare ground and now sheds stone onto the road. A path or a small courtyard of old brick and flag that has sunk into a set of trips. And a patio behind the cottage that has been topped up and re-laid over the years until it is sitting far too high against the wall, with a damp patch inside to match.
We come out and look before anybody talks about materials. That visit is free, the written itemised quote is free, and where a repair will genuinely do we will say so rather than sell you a rebuild you did not need.
The work
Entrances, courtyards and the ground behind the cottages
Entrances off the village street. Most of the older properties here were not built with a car in mind, so the parking is a later addition through a gap in a wall or a hedge, and that is really three jobs. The opening itself, which may mean taking down a length of wall and rebuilding a clean return and pier in the same brick or stone. The standing behind it, dug to a firm formation with a geotextile membrane and a compacted sub-base so it does not start rutting and ponding in winter. And the crossing to the carriageway, which is a dropped kerb application to Dorset Council as highway authority. We build the first two or three metres in something bound, because that is where the turning happens and where loose stone escapes onto the road.
Rounded shingle rolls, and on any sort of fall it ends up in the gutter and the gully. Angular gravel locks, a grid holds it in cells, and a resin bound finish fixes it altogether while still draining. Any of them fails without an edge restraint, so a haunched kerb or a brick border along the boundary is part of the job rather than a nicety. Where there is old paviour or stone worth keeping, it comes up carefully and is stacked, the ground beneath is corrected, and it goes back down with the odd replacement let in, which is slower than laying new and the only version that still looks like it belongs. It goes back on a full mortar bed with the jointing pointed rather than filled with a kiln dried sand that washes out and lets weed and green staining in.
Steps get a deep tread and a nosing you can pick out in the dark, because garden levels here step down towards the Piddle rather than run flat, and the paving is set with a positive fall away from the building.
How it runs
From your call to a written price
One person to ring, and an itemised quote. Paving your own front garden is normally permitted development, and the condition is the water rather than the area: over five square metres the surface has to be permeable or drain to a border, lawn or soakaway inside your own boundary, which is what the front garden paving rules set out. Send it onto the street and it needs planning permission. The village is a conservation area, so materials at the front carry more weight here than a mile away, and new gates, piers and walls have their own limits, lower where they front a highway, so the limits on new walls and gates is worth reading. Dorset Council handles all of it.
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 house with room for a grab lorry on its own ground is the cheap end, a cottage on the street where the wagon stands on the carriageway is dearer, and a courtyard reached by barrow through one narrow side gate is dearer again. Ground conditions, the depth of the dig and how much spoil goes away are the real variables, and on a street this tight the muck away and its disposal are a line of their own. Surface water has to be dealt with on the property rather than run into the street. Ask the depth of dig, the sub base and the drainage.
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. We are eighteen miles away, so tell us if a step has cracked or lifted enough to catch somebody, or water is finding a doorway. The phone is answered 24 hours for emergencies; scheduled work runs Monday to Friday, 8am to 6pm.
Worth knowing
Height against an old wall is the decision that matters here
Tolpuddle is a conservation area with 27 listed entries in it, which is a planning fact with a very practical consequence: a lot of the walls you would be paving up against were built solid, without the damp proof course a modern house has. On a wall like that the ground level outside is not a detail, it is the thing that keeps the inside dry.
Every time a patio or a path is topped up rather than taken up, the finished level creeps a course or two higher, and eventually the paving is above the internal floor. Then rain that lands on the paving has nowhere to go but sideways into the wall, and the damp patch that appears in the room beyond gets blamed on everything except the paving that caused it. We have lifted patios here that were three layers deep because nobody ever removed the old one.
So on an old wall we take the level down rather than build it up. The paving finishes well below the internal floor with a clear fall away from the house, and where a door sits low the answer is a channel drain and a step rather than raising the ground. A gravel margin or a narrow drainage channel along the base of the wall lets it dry out and keeps splashback off the brickwork, and we avoid sealing a hard cement edge tight against old masonry, because a solid wall has to be able to breathe.
One more thing to check before anything is ordered: where a cottage is listed, the walls, outbuildings and boundary structures that go with it can be covered by the same listing, so raising ground against the building or opening up a frontage may need listed building consent in its own right. We flag whatever applies at the survey and it goes into the written quote.
Who you are dealing with
A local firm you can check
We cover Tolpuddle, Puddletown, Milborne St Andrew, Bere Regis and the DT2 villages along the Piddle valley, 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.
Questions
Tolpuddle questions we get asked
The kitchen floor is barely above the patio. Is that the damp?
It is the likeliest cause. Once an outside surface finishes level with or above the internal floor, rain landing on it has nowhere to go but sideways into the wall, and on the old cottages at Tolpuddle there is often nothing in that wall to stop it. The cure is to take the paving down, hold it off the wall with a drained margin and fall it away. Work on the inside face will not hold while the levels are wrong.
What surfaces sit right in the middle of the village?
Gravel, hoggin and a reclaimed or muted brick, as a rule. The Tolpuddle Conservation Area brings appearance into play whenever the material changes, and a wide area of black tarmac in front of a cottage is the change that gets queried. There are twenty seven listed entries here as well, so a fair number of frontages are constrained by more than the conservation area alone. Dorset will give you a steer before anything is ordered.
Can we hard surface the front without applying for anything?
Under five square metres, or in a porous build that drains onto your own ground, generally yes. Go over that with a surface that sheds water to the road and it needs an application. In a village like Tolpuddle the sensible move is to build it porous regardless, because the road drainage in front of these cottages was never sized to swallow another roof's worth of run off. Dorset will confirm the position for your frontage.
Somebody mentioned nutrient neutrality. Does that apply to a patio?
Not to a patio or a drive. Tolpuddle drains to the Poole Harbour catchment and the nutrient rules bite where a scheme creates new overnight accommodation, so they catch an annexe or a conversion adding a bedroom and leave hard landscaping alone. If the project also includes a garden room somebody intends to sleep in, that becomes a different conversation and Dorset will want it settled before consent.
The brick path has sunk in the middle. Relay or replace?
Relay, provided the bricks are sound. Old path bricks are softer than modern pavers but they are what makes the frontage look right, so they come up, get cleaned off and go back on a fresh bed once the ground beneath is corrected. Broken ones move to the least visible run. At Tolpuddle that is nearly always the better route, because new machine made brick next to an old wall shows from the lane.
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Get a written price for your Tolpuddle drive or patio
Send the postcode and tell us what you are dealing with. We come out, look at the ground and the levels, and put the price in writing with the days it will take.