Driveways and patios in West Parley
Resin bound, block paving, stabilised gravel and stone patios across West Parley and the BH22 roads, with the drainage designed in. Free site visit and written quote.
The site visit is free and so is the written itemised quote. Thomas Hannen prices every job himself.
West Parley carries a high surface water rating and the Stour meadows sit a short walk to the south, so the first question on any drive here is where the rain goes once you have covered the ground. Answer that and the surface is the easy part.
The three calls we get most from these roads are a gravel drive that has spread itself across the pavement and worn down to bare patches where the wheels run, a wide tarmac frontage that has cracked and gone grey and now wants replacing with something that looks like the house, and a big rear patio that ponds at the house end every time it rains properly.
The plots here are generous, which means the areas are large and a mistake in the falls is expensive to live with. So the free site visit starts with a level and a trial hole rather than a brochure: what is under the existing surface, which way the ground runs, where the water is going now and where it can be allowed to go afterwards. You get that in writing, itemised, with the drainage as its own priced line rather than folded into a single figure.
The work
What we build on the West Parley plots
Wide frontages and in and out drives. A lot of houses here have room for two crossings and a sweep in front, and setting one out properly is half the job: the radii a car actually turns on, a border that keeps the lawn out of the surface, and a kerb or edge restraint haunched in concrete on every open edge so the surface cannot creep. Two crossings mean two approvals from the highway authority, worth starting before the paving is ordered.
Gravel that will not stay where it is put. Loose gravel on a long drive migrates onto the pavement, into the lawn and out of the ruts where the wheels run, and the fix is not more gravel. We excavate to formation, lay a geotextile membrane, compact a sub-base and set a stabilisation grid, so the stone sits in cells and rakes level again in minutes. Resin bound over a sound base is the other answer, and the one people here ask for most because it reads well on a wide frontage and there is nothing to weed. It only works on a base that is genuinely still. If the old tarmac ruts under a heel or has cracked in a pattern that says the ground has moved, resin laid over it cracks in the same places within a year.
Rear patios and terraces. Bungalows are better than a third of the houses here and the gardens are big, so the terraces are wide, and the wider the terrace the more the falls matter. Old flags come up, the base is rebuilt, and porcelain or sawn natural stone goes down on a full mortar bed running away from the house with the joints pointed. On a single storey house the finished level has very little room and still has to stay clear of the damp proof course, so where the doors are low we drop a step and drain the doorway rather than build up to meet it.
Drainage is designed rather than added. Surface water risk is high across West Parley and infiltration is not the default answer, so a soakaway is sized from a percolation test and may have to become a positive outfall instead. The alternatives are a channel drain across a garage door, a silted gully dug out and re-connected, or a permeable build-up that holds rainfall in open stone. Approved Document H is the standard the design answers to, and staining and ponding on an existing drive are the falls telling you what it needs.
How it runs
From your call to a written price
One person to ring, the same team throughout, and the quote itemised: excavation, muck away, sub base, edgings, surface and drainage on separate lines. Nothing is left open or unusable overnight. The rule that bites here is the front garden one, because these frontages are big: more than five square metres of new impermeable surface at the front needs permission unless the run-off goes to a soakable area on your own land, which the Planning Portal page on paving a front garden explains, and it is why resin bound and permeable block paving are as popular here as they are. A new or widened crossing is a separate approval, set out in what the Planning Portal says about dropped kerbs.
Cost
What decides the price of a driveway
No rate per square metre. What is under it decides more of the cost than what goes on top. A wide plot with an in and out drive, a detached house set back behind a long gravel run and a bungalow with a single crossing onto a busy road each price differently before anything is dug. Ground conditions, the depth of the dig and how much muck goes away are the real variables, and with the surface water risk here where the water goes is a design decision with a cost. Ask the dig depth, the sub base, the drainage and who takes the spoil.
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: somebody falls, or the water ends up against the house. In West Parley it is usually water coming off the drive and standing against the garage after a downpour, or a slab rocked loose by a back door. We make it safe first, then price the rest.
Worth knowing
Surface water is the risk here, and a new drive can make it worse
Surface water flooding is not river flooding. It is rain arriving faster than the ground and the drains can take it, running downhill and finding the lowest doorway, and this area is rated high for it. It is also the one kind of flooding a driveway can genuinely make worse, because every square metre you cover is a square metre that used to soak.
Before you design a large frontage here, put your postcode into the government flood risk service and look at the surface water layer rather than only the river one. It takes two minutes and it changes what you should build.
What it changes is this. Keep the surface permeable, or drain it to your own ground rather than letting it run to the road, because a drive that sheets onto the highway pushes the problem onto somebody downhill of you. Never fall a drive towards the house or the garage: put a channel drain across the threshold and give it somewhere to go. If your frontage sits lower than the road, a channel across the entrance stops the road's water coming in when a gully surcharges.
A permeable build-up is genuinely useful here because it stores rainfall in the open stone under the surface and releases it slowly, which is the SuDS approach and takes the peak off a downpour. And never connect a driveway to the foul drain: it is somebody else's flooded hallway at the end of that pipe. When you compare quotes for a drive on these roads, look for drainage as a priced line with a method attached to it. If it is not there, it has not been thought about.
Who you are dealing with
A local firm you can check
We cover West Parley, Longham, Ferndown, Hampreston, Parley Cross and out towards Bearwood 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.
Questions
West Parley questions we get asked
Surface water floods our road. Will a new drive worsen it?
Not if it holds its own water. West Parley carries a high surface water flood rating despite sitting outside the river flood zones, which means the trouble is rain arriving faster than the ground and the gullies can swallow it. A drive that sheds onto the road adds to that directly. We build in a permeable layer or a storage pit inside your boundary so the new surface keeps its own rainfall off the network.
Is resin bound gravel actually permeable?
The wearing course is, and what sits under it often is not. Water passes through the resin and then has to find somewhere to go, so laying it over an old tarmac drive leaves you with a permeable top on a sealed base and the water running off the edges. In West Parley, where the ground is naturally wet, the base and the outfall matter far more than the top. We price the whole build up.
What can I look at myself before booking a visit?
Three things. Where water stands after heavy rain, which tells us the falls are wrong. Whether the edge of the drive has spread and dropped, which points at the base rather than the surface. And where the inspection covers sit, because they fix the finished level. Detached houses are 35.2% of West Parley, so most plots here also have a side route worth measuring for width while you are out there.
Does the old tarmac get recycled or tipped?
It is separated on site and goes to a licensed transfer station, where planings and clean hardcore are crushed and used again. Soil and root material is the part nobody wants at the tip, so we keep it apart from the stone instead of mixing everything into one grab bag. On a West Parley frontage with a lot of topsoil under the old surface that separation is worth the effort, and disposal shows as its own line.
How long is the drive unusable after resin goes down?
Resin wants a dry surface and a settled forecast. Once laid, foot traffic after a few hours and vehicles the following day is the normal rule, stretching out in cold weather. The bigger constraint in West Parley is what sits underneath: if the old drive has to come out and a permeable build up goes in, the drive is closed while that is dug, compacted and settled, and the resin is only the final day.
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Get a written price for your West Parley drive or patio
A free site visit, the levels and the water worked out first, and an itemised written quote with the drainage priced as its own line.