Patios in Ashmore

The dig is slow. Digging in Ashmore means chalk with flint through it, and old concrete, sunken flags, a raised bed or roots on top of that. Flint is hard on a machine and hard on hand tools, so the excavation takes longer here than the area suggests. We dig to firm formation, and the spoil is loaded to a grab lorry or a skip and leaves with us rather than being spread round the garden.

The sub base. Chalk drains well when it is dry and turns to a paste when it is wet and worked, so we keep the formation covered, get the geotextile separator down and bring MOT Type 1 up in compacted layers of about 100mm. A base built on a churned chalk formation in February is a patio that moves in year one.

Porcelain. Calibrated twenty millimetre porcelain earns its place up here in Ashmore. It absorbs almost nothing, so there is no water in the slab for a frost to expand and split, and a textured finish keeps its grip through a wet, cold spell. Full bed of mortar over a slurry primed back, never dabs.

Stone. Sandstone is warm and forgiving and looks right beside flint and brick, but it is porous, so on an exposed plot it takes water in and a hard frost works on it. Limestone is more even and marks with iron. Granite is the densest and the most frost resistant of the three. Travertine is a poor choice at this height. Hand cut stone varies in thickness so the bed levels it; calibrated stone is sawn to a single depth.

Falls and the damp course. The paving falls away from the building and finishes two courses below the DPC where the garden allows, which is the point of Approved Document C. Water goes to a gully proved to run, a soakaway where the chalk will take it, which up here it often will, or a permeable build so the runoff stays on your ground.

Edges, steps and retaining. On sloping Ashmore plots the level changes come first. Edging bedded and haunched in concrete, a coping to the retaining wall, a kerb line at the lawn, and a gravel border along the house wall to take the drip off the eaves.

Jointing. This is the frost line. A full, well compacted joint keeps water out of the bed; a joint filled short takes water in, freezes and lifts the slab at its corner. Stone is hand pointed in a matched mortar or given a brush in compound worked deep into the joint, and porcelain takes a grout made for dense units.

Repairs. Re-bedding rocking slabs, rebuilding a sunken bay, replacing cracked units, raking out failed jointing, and cleaning a green terrace and correcting the falls so it dries.

A patio in Ashmore might sit behind a cottage, beside a farmhouse or on a garden that slopes away, and the ground is typically chalk under a clay and flint cap. Thomas checks the levels against the damp proof course, works out where the water can drain to, and writes the price himself.

The quote prices each stage apart: excavation and muck away, the sub base, how it falls and drains, any edgings or steps, the paving itself and what goes in the joints. You deal with one company for all of it.

If a micro digger can get through an Ashmore garden gate, the dig is quick; if not, it is barrow work, and the quote says which. Spoil leaves by the load, the site is swept each evening, and your access to the house is kept open. If we uncover old drains, footings or tree roots, the extra waits until you have a photo and a figure to agree.

Ashmore has twenty six listed entries, and the village is in the Ashmore Conservation Area as well, so anything visible from the road, a boundary wall opened for access, or a tree cut to clear a terrace is a separate question from the paving. That is worth checking with Dorset Council, which keeps the record of what is designated. Paving the garden itself is not building control work.

Slabs rocking at a corner and steps that have sunk are trip hazards, and a shaded terrace can turn green and slick over the winter. If someone could fall, mark it or cover it for now. Give us a call instead of filling in the form.

On the first visit we lift and re-lay the worst of it or make a step safe, and check the bedding beneath the remaining slabs. After a hard frost, a photo of which corners have lifted helps, because the pattern tells us whether it is the joints or the base. Scheduled days are Monday to Friday, 8am to 6pm. When we cannot answer, we ring you back the moment we can.

Call now: 07435 839745

Ashmore sits among the highest ground in this part of Cranborne Chase, and the difference that makes to a patio is not romantic, it is practical. Frost arrives earlier, stays longer and gets into anything holding water. A slab that has taken water in through an open joint, or a bed that is damp because the surface never dries, is doing the same thing a pothole does.

So the Ashmore specification shifts to suit. The material moves towards something dense, because porcelain and granite have nowhere to put the water. The joints get filled properly and compacted, because a short joint is the way in. And the falls are built to shed rather than to look level, because standing water is what freezes.

The dig is the other half of it. Chalk with flint through it is slow going, and it behaves differently wet and dry: it will take a soakaway readily where a clay garden would not, and it will turn to a slurry underfoot if you work an open formation in the rain. That is why we keep the excavation covered and get the stone in behind us as we go, and why we would rather move a start date than build a base on a formation that has been rained into.

Nearby places we also cover for patios, with straight-line distances from Ashmore, and the other trades we offer in Ashmore itself.

Everything we do in Blandford Forum Patios, all areas Every area we cover