Driveways in Upton
Block paving, resin bound, tarmac and stone patios across Upton and the BH16 roads. Free site visit, free written itemised quote.
The site visit is free and so is the written itemised quote. Thomas Hannen prices every job himself.
Last updated
On most Upton drives the surface is not the problem. The ground under it moves with the weather and the water has nowhere sensible to go, so whatever gets laid on top follows the same cracks within a couple of winters. We work out the base and the drainage first.
Upton drives crack into panels, frontages get squeezed into parking, and back paving tips towards the door. A concrete drive laid when the house was built that has cracked into panels and now rocks under a wheel. A front garden on a terraced or semi-detached row that has to become parking, on a frontage with barely enough room to swing a car onto. Or a back garden where the paving has tipped the wrong way and puddles against the back door every time it rains hard.
All three want looking at from below, not from the pavement. The free site visit means lifting a block or digging a trial hole, seeing what is actually under the surface and how fast the ground takes water away, and telling you there and then whether you need a re-lay, a new base, or drainage designed as part of it. Then it goes in writing with the method on it, not just a figure.
The work
Old drives, new parking and the base beneath them
Concrete drives from the estate years. Just over half of Upton was built between 1945 and 1982, peaking in the late sixties and early seventies, and many of those houses came with in-situ concrete, some of it laid thin over whatever was there and some of it thick and sound.
It cracks into panels, the panels rock, the edges break away and rain gets under and stays. Where the slab is sound and level we can build off it. Where it is not, we break it out, excavate to formation, lay a geotextile membrane so the stone cannot punch down into soft ground, then build a compacted sub-base in layers to the depth the ground and the parked weight need.
Front gardens turned into parking. A quarter of the housing here is terraced with a short frontage, and a lot of those front gardens are now a car. Done properly that is a dig, an edge restraint or kerb haunched in concrete so the surface cannot creep, and a crossing over the footway the highway authority has approved. On the newer roads it is block paving instead: lifted by hand, the sound blocks kept, the sub-base and the falls corrected, re-laid on screeded sand and re-sanded with kiln dried sand.
Back-door paving. Gardens here sit low and flat, so a patio that falls back towards the house is a damp problem, not a puddle. Old flags on five spots of mortar come up, the base is rebuilt, and porcelain or riven natural stone goes down on a full mortar bed with the fall running away from the wall and the joints pointed. The finished level has to stay clear of the damp proof course, and where a threshold is already tight we drop a step or run a channel drain across it instead of building up. For the patio itself, see patios in Upton.
Drainage is priced as its own item, and on this ground it is the one to get right. Infiltration is not the default answer in Upton, so a soakaway is sized from a percolation test first and may have to become a positive outfall instead. The ground is cohesive and shrinks and swells, so where the rainwater ends up beside a foundation is a structural question and not only a damp one, and Approved Document H is the standard the design is measured against. Old concrete and spoil leave by grab lorry where one can reach the front, by skip or barrow where it cannot.
How it runs
Laying a new drive in Upton, from the dig to the final sweep
Thomas comes out, measures up and prices it himself. Many Upton frontages are short and sit tight to the road, often a terrace or semi with room for one car, so he looks at levels, where the water will go, and whether the crossing needs changing.
The quote splits it into excavation, muck away, sub-base, edgings, the surface and drainage. The dig and the laying sit on the same written quote.
A drive is the one job where you lose the use of something, so we tell you in advance which days the car lives on the street. Nothing is left as an open trench at night, spoil goes the day it comes out, and the road is swept. If the dig finds an old drain, a soft spot or buried rubble, you get a photograph and a price before we deal with it.
The rule that catches people out is five square metres. Over that, new impermeable surface at the front needs permission unless it drains to a soakable area on your own land, and the Planning Portal page on paving a front garden explains it. A new or wider crossing over the footway is a separate approval, covered by the dropped kerb guidance. No conservation area covers Upton, and Dorset Council is the authority.
Cost
What drives the cost of a drive on Upton's ground
We do not work to a rate per square metre. What goes underneath costs more than what goes on top.
The frontage. A terraced frontage on a narrow road, a semi sharing a side strip with next door, and a bungalow with a straight run to its garage ask for quite different work before a spade goes in. Where a skip or a grab lorry can stand matters too.
The ground. Upton sits on cohesive ground that shrinks and swells. It holds water and moves, so the dig often goes deeper, the sub-base is thicker, and the muck away weighs more than it would on sand.
The water. A soakaway struggles in ground like this, so run-off may need a channel to a positive outfall instead, and Approved Document H sets out how drainage is done. Where the drive meets the house, the finished level has to stay below the damp course.
The surface. Block paving, permeable block, resin bound and tarmac each need different edgings and bases, and a permeable choice can take the permission question away at the front.
Ask any other quote how deep the dig is, what the sub-base is, where the water goes, and who takes the spoil.
If it is urgent
A sunken bay, a lifted block or a drive that floods
Phone rather than use the form. A lifted block, a sunk bay by the front door, or a gully that no longer takes water will not put itself right: somebody trips, or the water sits against the house. Look first at the gully by the garage door, which silts solid, and at any slab on a path where a pushchair goes.
We make it safe first, lifting the loose units or clearing the gully, and then price the permanent repair. Booked jobs run Monday to Friday, 8am to 6pm. Call, do not write, if someone could fall, and if you miss us we will ring you back as soon as we can.
Worth knowing
Ground that moves with the seasons, and what that means for your drive
The ground under a lot of Upton sits wet for much of the winter and shrinks back in a dry summer. It is a slow, seasonal movement, nothing dramatic, but it is enough to ruin paving that was laid straight onto it. This is why we are fussy about the part nobody ever sees.
Dig to a firm formation, not to a depth somebody guessed, put a geotextile membrane between the soft ground and the stone so the two cannot mix, and compact the sub-base in layers, never in one go. A drive built that way rides the seasons. A drive laid on fifty millimetres of stone over topsoil cracks along the same line every year and no amount of re-sanding fixes it.
The second half of it is where you put the water, and on this ground that is a structural question, not a tidiness one. A soakaway dropped in close to the house is feeding water straight at the foundations of a building sitting on ground that already swells and shrinks, which is how people turn a puddle into a crack. Keep it well away from the building and downhill of it, size it from a percolation test, not from habit, and if the hole fills up and stays full then infiltration is not your answer and a positive outfall to a ditch or an existing surface water drain is.
The same goes for mature trees: taking one out to widen a drive, or paving over the roots of one that stays, both change how much water that ground holds. Approved Document H is the document a drainage design should be sitting on, and if a quote for an Upton drive has no priced drainage line on it, nobody has thought about any of this.
Who you are dealing with
The owner marks out and prices your drive
From our base on Wolverton Road in Boscombe it is 8.5 miles to Upton, and we cover Lytchett Minster, Hamworthy, Creekmoor and the BH16 roads towards Lytchett Matravers. For an Upton drive, Dorset Council deals with the dropped kerb and any planning.
Bournemouth Roofing & Building Ltd is registered in England and Wales, company number 15471719. Thomas Hannen owns the firm and measures and prices every drive himself. We have a verified 10 out of 10 from a customer on Checkatrade. Neither the visit nor the itemised written quote costs you anything. Before you book a visit in Upton, you can read our customers' Google reviews, word for word, on our reviews page.
Planning at a glance
Do you need planning permission in Upton?
Most repairs in Upton 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 Upton |
|---|---|
| Who decides | Dorset Council is the planning authority for Upton. Dorset Council's heritage pages set out what it controls. |
| Conservation area | None covers Upton, so a like-for-like repair is ordinary maintenance. |
| Listed buildings | Yes, there are listed buildings in and around Upton. If yours is one, work can need listed building consent. |
| Protected landscape | No National Park or National Landscape covers Upton. |
Questions
Questions about driveways in Upton
Will a soakaway work in the ground around Upton?
A soakaway will not work automatically, because the ground through Upton holds water, so infiltration has to be proved with a percolation test in the hole itself, not assumed from a drawing. If that test fails, the surface water needs a positive outfall into an existing drain or a ditch instead, and that decision changes the levels and the falls across the whole drive. We dig the trial hole and time it before anything is priced.
Our concrete drive dates from the early 1970s. Break it out?
Often it can stay put. 52.1% of the housing in Upton went up between 1945 and 1982, peaking in the late 1960s and early 1970s, and the slabs from that period vary: some are thick and well compacted, others thin, and a trial hole tells you which you have. If the concrete has cracked along the joints but does not rock or drop under a wheel, it serves as the base for block paving once the levels are cut back. Anything that moves underfoot comes out.
Where does the run off from new paving end up?
Somewhere that is not the base of your wall. The ground across Upton shrinks and swells with the seasons, so rainwater soaking in repeatedly beside a foundation becomes a structural question as well as a damp one. We fall the paving away from the house, put a channel drain along the threshold, and pipe it out to a soakaway or drain sited well clear of the footings.
There is no side access on our terrace. What then?
Everything goes through the house or over the fence. Terraced homes are 24.2% of the stock in Upton, so a rear patio here is often a hand job with boards laid through the hallway, or a conveyor working over a boundary with a neighbour's agreement. That changes the labour and the number of days rather than whether the job can be done. Thomas Hannen walks the route on the site visit and prices the access honestly.
What is actually written on the itemised quote?
Dig depth, volume of muck away, sub-base type and thickness, edging detail, surface, and drainage, each as its own line. Thomas Hannen measures and writes it himself, so if the ground here needs a piped outfall instead of a soakaway you see that as a separate item rather than a lump sum with no working shown. The site visit and the written quote are both free.
Nearby, and next door
Driveways near Upton
Nearby places we also cover for driveways, with straight-line distances from Upton, and the other trades we offer in Upton itself.
Driveways nearby
Our other trades in Upton
Driveways and patios guides
Driveway planning permission and where water goes Sunken or ponding driveway: base or drainage Indian sandstone vs porcelain paving: an honest comparisonEverything we do in Hamworthy Driveways, all areas Every area we cover
Free quote
Get a written price for your Upton drive or patio
A free site visit, a trial hole where it is needed, and an itemised written quote with the base and the drainage costed separately.