Driveways 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.

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; for the patio itself, see patios in West Moors. 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 on collection days, 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 West Moors 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.

What goes under a drive decides more of the cost than the block, gravel or tarmac on top. The ground. Parts of West Moors sit on clay that shrinks in dry weather and swells when wet. On that, a drive needs a deeper dig and more compacted sub-base than on sandy soil, or it ruts where the wheels go. We dig a test hole if there is any doubt.

Where the rain goes. Surface water has to be dealt with on your own land, not run into the road. On clay a soakaway may barely drain, so the answer is often a permeable surface built to the government guidance on front gardens, or a channel drain to a proper outlet. Either is a real line on the quote.

The plot. A bungalow with a straight run to a detached garage, a corner plot with two frontages and a shared parking court at a block of flats each need their own approach before a spade goes in. Old concrete to break out, and how much spoil leaves, move the price a long way.

The crossing. Widening the dropped kerb is a council approval with its own fee and works, and it needs to be sorted before the drive is finished.

Ask any other quote how deep they are digging, what sub-base depth goes down, where the surface water ends up and who takes the spoil.

We lay drives in West Moors, Three Legged Cross, Ferndown and out towards Verwood and St Leonards across the BH22 roads. The drive up from our Boscombe base is 7.1 miles, and Dorset Council handles planning and highways here.

The firm is Bournemouth Roofing & Building Ltd, number 15471719 on the register for England and Wales. Thomas Hannen owns it and measures up and prices each drive himself. A verified Checkatrade customer marked us 10 out of 10. The visit is free, as is the written quote with each item on it. Before you book a visit in West Moors, you can read our customers' Google reviews, word for word, on our reviews page.

Most repairs in West Moors 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.