Patios in Bournemouth: New Patios, Relays and Repairs
New patios in porcelain and natural stone, laid on a full mortar bed over a base built up in compacted layers, plus relays, repointing and repairs to paving that rocks, sinks or holds water.
The site visit is free and so is the written itemised quote. Thomas Hannen prices every job himself.
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Patios in Bournemouth
New Patios, Relays and Repairs Across Bournemouth, Poole and Christchurch
Bournemouth Roofing & Building lays new patios in Bournemouth, Poole and Christchurch, and relays and repairs old ones. Every patio goes down on ground dug out to a firm formation, a sub base compacted in layers and a full mortar bed, laid to fall away from the house. Thomas Hannen prices each job himself after a free site visit.
Four things make a patio worth looking at. A slab that tips when you stand on its corner. A puddle against the back wall two days after rain. A shaded corner gone green and slippery by November. Or a garden with nowhere flat to put a table.
Only the last of those is a new patio. The others can be a lift and relay of one bay, a drain at the back door, or a clean and a fresh joint, and the survey tells you which. Paving at the front of the house has its own run-off rules, so that sits with our driveways and patios and block paving pages.
Many homes in central Bournemouth are flats. If yours is one, find out who owns the garden before you gather prices, because the ground outside a ground floor flat often belongs to the freeholder. A path or terrace that several households cross in the dark also wants a textured slab that keeps its grip when wet. Our page for landlords and agents covers shared ground.
- Porcelain, Indian sandstone, limestone, granite, slate, reclaimed York stone and concrete paving
- Every slab on a full wet mortar bed with a primed back, never bedded on five dabs
- Falls set away from the building and the finished level kept below the damp proof course
- Bournemouth Roofing & Building Ltd, company number 15471719, with one verified Checkatrade review rated 10 out of 10
How the job runs
How a New Patio Is Built, From the Dig to the Joints
A new patio is built in five stages: the old surface and any soft ground come out, a compacted MOT Type 1 sub base goes in, each slab is bedded on a full wet mortar bed, the open edges are haunched, and the joints are filled. The slab you choose goes down last, on top of the four stages that keep it level.
Taking the Old Surface Out, and Where It Goes
Pressed flags bedded on sand, a raft of 1960s concrete, a raised bed, a stump and its roots, or made ground with rubble through it. It is dug out to a formation that will not move, and it is the part nobody budgets for. Spoil is priced by the load, and the duty of care on waste is why it is worth asking anyone quoting you where the muck ends up.
MOT Type 1 Brought Up in Compacted Layers
A geotextile separator goes over soft ground so the stone does not sink into it, then the sub base goes in thin lifts, whacked at each one and carried past the line of the paving so the edge has something under it. Tip the whole depth in and run a plate over the top and you compact the surface while the bottom half stays loose, which is what a patio that settles unevenly is made of.
A Full Wet Bed, Not Five Dabs
Every slab goes down on a continuous bed of mortar with a slurry primer painted on the back, so nothing is hollow underneath. Dabs are quicker and they leave voids that hold water, and the frost lifts the corner out. On porcelain the primer counts twice over, because a dense body gives the mortar almost nothing to grip.
Edgings, Retaining Courses, Steps and Jointing
An open edge is held with a kerb haunched in concrete, and any edge holding soil back gets a footing and a land drain behind it, capped with a coping that throws water clear. An unhaunched edging is the commonest reason a patio spreads and drops along its border. Steps come off a footing with equal risers you can walk in the dark. Joints are brushed in wet with a two part compound and tooled off before it goes hard.
Who runs the job, and what happens if the dig finds something
Thomas Hannen comes out for the survey, prices the job and stays the person you ring from the first visit to the last joint. The written quote takes each stage on its own line. The route into the garden is boarded and sheeted, the site is swept at the end of every day, and the spoil leaves with us. If the dig turns up something nobody could see at the survey, such as an old concrete raft, a buried drain or a pocket of made ground, work stops. You get a photograph and a price, and nothing extra is done until you agree it.
Timing
How Long Does a Patio Take to Lay?
A straightforward patio on level ground, with a side gate wide enough for a barrow, is a few days' work from the dig to the last joint. A deep dig-out, steps, a retaining course, a new drain run or every load carried through the house all add to that. Your written quote says how long your garden should take.
Weather moves it too. Mortar and jointing compounds need a dry spell with no frost while they go off, so a wet or freezing week holds up the laying even when the dig can carry on. Once the last joint is in, the bed and the joints still need a couple of days before anything heavy goes on, and the questions below cover when you can put the table back.
The paving
Which Paving Slabs Are Best for a Patio?
The best paving slab for a UK patio is the one that suits its aspect, the age of the house and the upkeep you will do. Porcelain suits a shaded or north-facing patio, Indian sandstone sits well against older brick, and a flamed granite is the safest choice for steps. Aspect is the part people leave out, and it decides whether a patio is a pleasure or a chore by its third autumn.
Porcelain
Twenty millimetre external grade porcelain is the modern default, and on a shaded terrace it is usually right. It takes up almost no water, so frost has nothing to work on and algae little to hold, and a textured face keeps its grip in the wet. It is calibrated to one thickness, so the joints stay honest. It wants a wet blade and a slurry primer, and both add labour, not material.
Indian sandstone
Warm, easy to work, and the finish that sits most comfortably against older brick and stone. Riven sandstone is split, not sawn, so thickness varies across the pack and the mortar bed does the levelling. It is porous: it darkens where water lands repeatedly and greens on an elevation that never sees the sun.
Limestone
Quieter and more uniform than sandstone, and it suits a house where the paving should sit back and let the garden lead. It marks with iron, so a rusting table foot or a bag of fixings left out overnight stains it. It weathers softer than the pallet suggests, so ask for a sample.
Granite
The hardest of the natural stones and the least likely to move once down. A flamed finish holds grip in the wet as well as anything, which makes it sensible for steps and the strip outside a back door. It is unforgiving to cut, so curves cost more in time on granite than on anything else.
Slate
Dense, dark and sharp against white render and big glazing. A riven face keeps its grip, while a honed one turns slick in the wet. Dark slate gets hot underfoot in full sun, and a poor one can flake along its layers, so buy slate sold as external paving and ask where it was quarried.
Reclaimed York stone and old flagstones
Nothing suits a period house better, and nothing is harder to lay well. Thickness can vary a long way across one pack, so the bed is built up slab by slab. A reclaimed pallet arrives with old mortar on the backs and some breakage, so order more than the area. If you are relaying your own old flags, they can go back down on a new base, because the stone is rarely the part that failed.
Block paving, setts and cobbles
Blocks suit a patio that doubles as a path or a bin route. Granite setts make a hard-wearing border or a band around a slab patio, and cobbles are best kept to edges and strips because they are bumpy under a chair. Block paving is a flexible pavement on a sand bed held by a restrained edge, and our block paving page covers that build.
Travertine and concrete paving
Travertine is beautiful in the dry and the one most worth thinking twice about. It is full of open pores and holds water long after the rest of the garden has dried, so on a shaded terrace it stays damp and grows a film. Pressed concrete paving is the other end of the range: consistent, quick to lay, and a good one outlasts a poor natural stone.
Calibrated or riven, and why it moves the price
Calibrated means every slab is sawn to one thickness, so the bed under it is a constant depth and the surface comes up flat with far less adjustment. Riven stone varies through the pack, and that variation is taken out slab by slab in the mortar. The stone can cost the same and the laying does not.
Relays and repairs
Patio Repairs: Rocking Slabs, Sunken Bays, Repointing and Crazy Paving
Most patio repairs are smaller jobs than a new patio. A rocking slab is lifted, cleaned off and re-bedded on a full bed. A sunken bay has its base rebuilt in layers and goes back to a fall. Washed-out joints are raked out and refilled, which is patio repointing. The survey decides which of those you need.
A slab that tips has a void beneath it, built in the day it was bedded or washed out since. One or two in a sound patio is a lift and relay. A whole bay moving together is the base, and relaying slabs over it buys a season.
Repointing a patio is worth doing on its own when the slabs are still sound and level but the joints have gone to moss and sand. The old joint comes out to a good depth, the slabs are cleaned, and a compound or a mortar joint that suits the stone goes in. If the slabs move as the joints are raked out, the bed has failed and repointing alone will not hold.
Old crazy paving laid on sand tends to rock piece by piece. It can be lifted and relaid on a full bed with fresh joints, which keeps the look, or replaced where the pieces have broken too small to bed. A matching slab for one cracked unit is easier if you kept spares, and reclaimed stone can often be matched closer than new.
Sealing is optional. A sealer can help pale sandstone or limestone resist staining, but it has to go onto clean, dry stone and it wears, so it needs doing again. Porcelain takes up almost no water and does not need one. A green film on a patio that is still sound and level is a cleaning job, on our exterior cleaning page.
Fault finding
What Are the Most Common Patio Mistakes?
The common patio mistakes are nearly all under the slabs: bedding on five dabs of mortar instead of a full bed, tipping the sub base in at one depth and compacting only the top, laying flat or with a fall toward the house, building the level up to the damp proof course, leaving the edges unhaunched, and brushing jointing compound in dry. Each one shows up as a fault you can see.
| What you see | The mistake behind it | What it damages | What puts it right |
|---|---|---|---|
| One slab tipping when you stand on it | Dabs, or a bed that has washed out | The slab, which cracks under a point load | Lift it, clean off, re-bed on a full bed |
| A whole area sunk below the rest | A sub base never compacted in layers | The falls, and the joints around the dip | Take it up, rebuild the base in layers, relay |
| A puddle sitting against the house wall | No fall, or a fall running back at the house | The brickwork at the base of the wall | Relay that bay to a fall, drain the threshold |
| Damp inside at skirting height by the patio | Paving built up to the damp proof course | Plaster and decoration inside | Lower the strip by the wall, or add a channel drain |
| The border spreading and dropping | An edge with no concrete haunching | The outer row of slabs and the falls | Lift the edge, set a haunched kerb, relay |
| Joints washed out and full of moss | Loose sand, or a compound put in dry | The bed, once water gets between the slabs | Rake out, brush a compound in wet, tool off |
| A white bloom on new stone | None: salts drying out of the bed | Nothing structural, appearance only | Leave it to weather, then wash down |
Knowing which fault you have matters when you compare quotes. Some of those are half a day and some are a rebuild with a skip outside, so anybody pricing every one as a new patio is selling the most expensive answer to the cheapest problem.
Water
Falls Away From the House, and Where the Water Goes
A patio should fall away from the house along its full length, finish at least two brick courses (about 150mm) below the damp proof course, and send its water to a gully, a soakaway or a permeable build-up. All three are set out at the survey, before the paving is chosen, because a patio is usually built against the one wall you least want wet.
The fall runs along the whole surface, not just the first course by the door. Around one in eighty moves water without being noticeable underfoot, and it has to be consistent: a flat spot holds a puddle just as reliably as a badly laid patio.
The finished level matters as much as the fall, and the reasoning is in Approved Document C on site preparation and resistance to moisture. Build the level up against a wall and you bridge the damp course, and the damp arrives inside at skirting height on a house whose brickwork looks perfect from the garden. On an older house with no damp course at all, the level is taken off the floor inside, and a gravel margin keeps splashback off the wall.
Where a back door already sits low, the answer is never to raise the paving to meet it. It is a channel drain across the threshold running to a gully, or a step down onto the terrace, or both, decided at the survey with a level on the brickwork.
Then the water has to reach somewhere. Approved Document H on drainage and waste disposal sets the order: a soakaway or other infiltration first, where the ground will take it and it can sit clear of the foundations; then a watercourse; and only then a drain or sewer. An existing gully at the back door is often where a small patio's water already goes, and the survey checks what it connects to. Where a percolation test shows the ground will not take the water, a positive outfall is the only honest answer. The other route is to stop the water becoming runoff at all: a permeable build-up over open graded stone lets rain through the joints into the ground below, and the BSI guide to modular permeable pavements covers how those are built. On a plot that already takes water in heavy rain, check the flood risk for the area first.
Permission
Does a Patio Need Planning Permission?
A patio at ground level in a back garden normally needs no planning permission, because hard surfacing within the grounds of a house is covered by the permitted development rights for a dwellinghouse. Height, flats, listed buildings and front gardens are the exceptions, and the government's guidance on when permission is required is the plain English version.
Raising the surface into a platform more than 300mm above the surrounding ground takes it outside permitted development, which is where a level terrace on a slope trips up. A retaining wall over a metre high next to a road is caught by the rules on fences, gates and garden walls, and a wall holding back a real depth of ground is building control work judged against Approved Document A on structure.
Flats and maisonettes do not have the householder rights a house has, so check with BCP Council and with the freeholder before a patio goes down. A listed building brings its grounds with it, so garden work can need consent where the house is untouched: BCP publish their listed building records, Dorset Council publish their listed building guidance, and inside the National Park the interactive property map shows what applies.
Front gardens run on a different rule, about surface water reaching the road. That belongs with the guidance on paving your front garden and our driveways page.
What it costs
What Decides the Price of a Patio?
A patio is priced on what has to come out, how materials get in and spoil gets out, what the levels ask for, and where the water goes. The slabs you choose are rarely the biggest line. There is no honest average cost for a patio, because a flat lawn behind a wide gate and a sloping garden reached through the kitchen are different jobs.
That is why we do not publish a rate by the square metre. Thomas prices your garden once he has seen it, and the written itemised quote is free.
What the survey is measuring
- What is coming out, and how deep. A concrete raft, flags on sand, a raised bed, a stump or made ground are all different digs, and the depth to a firm formation is the number nobody gives you over the phone.
- How the garden is reached. A gate a machine fits through, a side alley a barrow fits down and a route through the house are three different jobs before a slab is cut.
- What the levels ask for. A flat plot wants a base and a fall. A garden that climbs wants a terrace: a footing, a haunched retaining course, a coping and steps.
- Where the water is allowed to go. An existing gully, a channel drain at a low threshold, a soakaway clear of the footings or a permeable build-up are four different costs, and the ground decides which are available.
- The paving and the setting out. Calibrated or riven, the size of the units, and how many cuts a curve, a border or a step puts into the layout.
- Protection and clearing up. The route in is sheeted, the site is swept at the end of each day, and the waste leaves with us.
What we will ask you before we come out
How big the area is and what is on it now. Whether the garden is level or climbing. How you get to the back. Whether the back door sits high or low against the ground outside.
Reading two patio quotes side by side
Ask what depth is being excavated and where the spoil goes. Ask whether the sub base is compacted in layers, whether the slabs sit on a full bed or on dabs, which drain, gully or soakaway the water ends up in, and whether the edges are haunched. Two prices for one garden are usually two different jobs, and the cheaper one dug less.
Before the dig in Bournemouth
Trees, Roots and Conservation Areas in Bournemouth
A new patio dug near a tree in a Bournemouth conservation area has a council step before the dig. BCP Council needs 6 weeks' written notice before work on a tree in a conservation area, and a tree with a Tree Preservation Order needs the council's consent first. A patio at ground level still needs no planning permission.
Bournemouth's conservation areas include Meyrick Park and Talbot Woods, Dean Park, East Cliff, The Saints, Westbourne and Boscombe Manor, and the council's list of conservation areas shows where each boundary runs. They do not always follow the streets you would expect, so check the address, not the name of the neighbourhood.
What that changes for you: if the patio needs a tree taken out, or the dig will cut through the roots of a tree you want to keep, sort the notice or the consent before the date is booked. A preservation order consent is applied for through the Planning Portal, and the council can tell you whether a tree is covered. Roots matter as much as branches, so near a tree the edge of the patio may need to stop short of the root area, or the build-up may need to change. Thomas marks that at the survey.
Questions
Patio Questions and Answers
How much does a new patio cost in Bournemouth?
Nobody can give you a fair figure without seeing the garden, and a rate by the square metre hides the parts that cost most. The price is set by how deep the dig goes and how much spoil leaves, whether a barrow or a machine can reach the back, the levels and any steps or retaining edge, where the water drains, and the paving and its cut count. The site visit and the written itemised quote are free.
How long before a patio is ready to walk on and put furniture on?
Give the bedding and the jointing a couple of days before anything heavy goes on, longer in cold or damp weather, because both are still gaining strength. Light foot traffic is fine sooner. Thomas tells you on the day, and a route through the garden stays open while the work goes on.
Can new paving be laid over an existing patio?
Sometimes. A concrete base that is sound, not cracked through and already falls away from the house can be primed and used under new slabs. It does not work where the old patio rocks or ponds, because the new one inherits the fault, or where the extra height would bring the paving within two brick courses of the damp proof course. Old slabs bedded on sand are never a base, so they come up.
What is the cheapest way to do a patio properly?
Keep what is sound. If most of the patio is level, relay the failed bay on a new bed and leave the rest. If the slabs are sound and only the joints have gone, repoint and clean. For a new patio, a good concrete or calibrated slab lays faster than riven stone, and a simple shape with few cuts saves labour. The saving to avoid is in the base, because dabs and a thin sub base are where cheap patios fail.
Is porcelain better than natural stone for a patio?
On a shaded or north-facing patio, usually yes. External grade porcelain takes up almost no water, so algae struggle to hold and a textured face keeps its grip in the wet. Natural stone, sandstone especially, looks warmer against older brick, but it is porous and greens where the sun never reaches. Porcelain needs a slurry primer and a wet blade, so it takes more labour to lay.
Why does my patio hold a puddle against the back wall?
Because the fall runs the wrong way, or there is no fall at all. Paving should drop away from the building along its whole length, not just at the door, and a surface laid flat ponds wherever the base has settled since. Water standing against a wall soaks the brickwork at the point it is most likely to bridge inside. The fix is a lift and relay of that bay.
Areas covered
Paving Work Across Bournemouth, Poole & Dorset
Patios are laid and repaired from a base in Boscombe, across Bournemouth, Poole and Christchurch, and out to Wimborne, Ferndown, Ringwood and Swanage. New patios, terraces, steps and paving repairs in these towns and everywhere between:
Bournemouth Roofing & Building Ltd is registered in England and Wales, company number 15471719, owned and run by Thomas Hannen, and the Checkatrade review on the profile is a verified 10 out of 10. Drives, resin and tarmac sit on our driveways and patios page, and block paved drives and paths on our block paving page. A garden or retaining wall that needs rebuilding is on our bricklaying and repointing page, and mortar joints alone on our repointing page.
Patios by location
Patios in every town and village we cover
Each page is written around the gardens that are actually there: how far the ground climbs, how you get a barrow to the back, what the houses are built of where the paving meets them, and what the planning position does to a raised terrace. A page for every place we cover, grouped by area.
Bournemouth suburbs
Poole and Christchurch
Christchurch, Broadstone and the northern edge
Wimborne, Ferndown and the east Dorset heaths
- Wimborne Minster
- Corfe Mullen
- Ferndown
- West Moors
- Verwood
- Three Legged Cross
- Furzehill
- Holt (also Chalbury Common, Gaunt's Common and more)
- Woodlands
- Ashley Heath
- Stone (also Sturminster Marshall)
- Alderholt
- Cranborne (also Whitmore)
Purbeck, Wareham and the Frome valley
- Swanage
- Corfe Castle (also Studland)
- Langton Matravers (also Worth Matravers, Harman's Cross)
- Wareham
- Ridge (also Stoborough)
- Sandford
- Holton Heath
- Lytchett Matravers
- Wool
- West Lulworth (also Burngate)
- Winfrith Newburgh (also Briantspuddle)
- Owermoigne
- Crossways
- Bere Regis
Blandford, the Winterbornes and Cranborne Chase
- Blandford Forum
- Bryanston
- Stourpaine (also Durweston, Ash)
- Spetisbury (also Charlton Marshall)
- Tarrant Monkton (also Pimperne)
- Iwerne Minster (also Shroton)
- Winterborne Kingston
- Winterborne Stickland
- Milborne St Andrew (also Winterborne Whitechurch)
- Tolpuddle
- Sixpenny Handley
- Ashmore
Ringwood, Fordingbridge and the Avon valley
- Ringwood
- Hangersley (also Hightown)
- Burley (also Burley Street)
- Bransgore
- Sopley
- Thorney Hill
- Fordingbridge
- Sandleheath
- Rockbourne (also Martin)
- Breamore (also Woodgreen)
- Hyde (also Frogham, North Gorley and more)
- Downton
- Redlynch
- Lover
The New Forest and the Solent shore
- New Milton
- Barton on Sea
- Bashley
- Ashley
- Milford on Sea
- Everton (also Hordle)
- Lymington
- Walhampton and Portmore (also Pilley)
- Boldre (also Sandy Down, Tiptoe and more)
- East Boldre
- Brockenhurst
- Lyndhurst
- Minstead
- Cadnam and Bartley
Free quote
Have the Levels Taken Before You Choose the Slab
Send one photograph from the back door looking down the garden and one of the worst area close up. We will come out, put a level on the brickwork, work out what has to be dug and where the water can go, and put a written itemised price in front of you.