Driveways and patios in Wimborne Minster

Frontages and courtyards behind the old houses. Getting on for a fifth of the houses in Wimborne are pre-1919 and the largest single group is pre-1900, so much of this work is small areas with awkward access and often no way in except through the house or a side gate. Everything moves by barrow and the machine that would take a day off the job simply will not fit. We lift old clay paviours and stone flags by hand, keep and clean what is sound, rebuild the base, and re-lay with the pattern and the pointing that was there. Sawn natural stone, clay pavers and granite setts all sit comfortably on these streets. Concrete block on a period frontage rarely does.

Ground levels against an old wall. This is the one that costs people money in Wimborne. On the oldest houses the damp proof course is a slate course low down, or there is none at all, and generations of paving laid over paving have quietly raised the ground until it bridges the wall and wet tracks inside. The fix is to reduce the level rather than add to it, and where that is impossible, a drained gravel margin or a channel drain along the wall with a proper outfall. We check it with a level before quoting, because it changes the whole design of a courtyard.

Shared parking at converted houses and blocks. A third of the town's homes are flats, and a lot of that parking sits behind converted buildings, in courts never built for the number of cars now on them. The bays by the entrance go first and the falls are usually flat enough that water stands and stains. We will survey one for a managing agent or a residents' group and price it in sections so the whole court is never closed, set out plainly enough for leaseholders to read. Where the cost triggers a formal consultation, section 20 of the Landlord and Tenant Act 1985 is the process the agent has to follow.

Out from the centre it is the familiar work: tarmac gone grey and open, concrete cracked into rocking panels, block paving dished by the garage and short of jointing sand. We lift and re-lay block by hand on a corrected sub-base, overlay a sound base in tarmac or resin bound, or excavate to formation, lay a geotextile membrane and build a compacted sub-base to the depth a parked car needs. Patios come up off their five dabs of mortar and go back on a full mortar bed with the fall running away from the house, and the finished level is set from the threshold rather than from the old paving.

Room for a soakaway is scarce in a town garden and the ground shrinks and swells, so the drainage is often a permeable build-up, a channel drain to an existing surface water outfall, or a silted gully dug out and re-connected. Approved Document H is the standard the design answers to. On a narrow street there is frequently nowhere to stand a skip, so the muck away is planned around a timed grab lorry and everything leaves with us.

No rate per square metre. What is under it decides more of the cost than what goes on top. A town centre terrace where every barrow comes through the house, a courtyard behind a shop with one gated entrance and a semi on the edge of town with a drive you can park a van on are three jobs before a spade goes in. After that it is the depth of the dig, how much muck goes away and where the surface water is allowed to go. Ask the dig depth, the sub base, the drainage and who takes the spoil.

We cover Wimborne Minster, Colehill, Merley, Furzehill, Pamphill and out to Corfe Mullen and Broadstone across the BH21 postcodes, 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.