Driveways and patios in West Moors

Tired tarmac and cracked concrete from the estate years. Getting on for two thirds of West Moors went up between 1945 and 1982, peaking in the late sixties and early seventies, so these drives are all much of an age and they fail together. Thin tarmac over very little goes grey and loose once the binder has weathered out, then ruts under a parked car and crumbles at an edge that never had a restraint. Where the base underneath is genuinely sound we can overlay in tarmac or take resin bound over the top, which is the cheapest good result available. Where it is not, it comes out, we excavate to formation, lay a geotextile membrane and build a compacted sub-base to a depth that will actually hold a car. The other half of that generation is in-situ concrete, which goes as rocking panels with weed in every crack. Breaking it out is a machine job and the spoil is heavy, so muck away and disposal are their own lines.

Patios, and paving at a bungalow door. Old flags on five dabs of mortar, rocking and falling the wrong way, are the standard find. They come up, the base is rebuilt, and porcelain or sawn natural stone goes down on a full mortar bed with the fall running away from the house and the joints pointed. Half the houses in West Moors are bungalows, and a single storey house has very little room above ground level while still having to stay clear of the damp proof course, so we take a level against the threshold before anything is priced. Shared parking at the flats and retirement blocks wears differently again: the bays by the entrance go first, the bin store apron takes a hammering every week, and the falls are flat enough that water sits and stains. We will survey a court and price it in sections, so the whole thing is never shut at once.

Drainage is priced separately, and around here infiltration is not the default answer. The ground is naturally wet, so a soakaway is sized from a percolation test rather than guessed at, and the design changes to a positive outfall where infiltration will not work. Otherwise it is a channel drain across a garage door, a silted gully dug out and re-connected, or a permeable build-up holding rainfall in open stone. Approved Document H is the standard it all answers to.

No rate per square metre. What is under it decides more of the cost than what goes on top. A bungalow with a straight run to a detached garage, a chalet on a corner plot with two frontages and a flat in a block sharing one parking court are three jobs before a spade goes in. On wet ground the depth of the dig and how much muck goes away are the real variables, and the surface water has to be dealt with on the property. Ask the dig depth, the sub base, where the water ends up and who takes the spoil.

We cover West Moors, Three Legged Cross, Ferndown and out towards Verwood and St Leonards across the BH22 roads, and Dorset Council is the planning and building control authority for this address. 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.