Patios in Beacon Hill

Starting with what you actually want. With nothing designated over this settlement, the first conversation is about the patio, not permissions. How many people sit out, where the sun is at seven, whether a barbecue wants its own corner, and whether the lawn stays. That shapes the size, and the size shapes everything after it.

The dig and the muck away. Turf and topsoil, old concrete, a set of flags bedded on sand, roots and any made ground, all excavated to formation and taken off site. Spoil is priced by the load that leaves, not by the metre it covered. Access on most Beacon Hill plots is good enough for machinery and a skip, which keeps that part sensible.

Levels against the house. We scrape back, chalk the DPC on the brickwork and set the finished paving two courses below it, falling away from the wall. Where a threshold has to stay flush for a wide door, a recessed channel does the job a step would otherwise do.

Base and bed. Geotextile membrane, MOT Type 1 hardcore compacted in layers, a sharp sand screed to level it, then a full bed of mortar under every slab with a slurry primer on the back. A proper mortar bed stays solid. Dabs go hollow, and a hollow slab is the one that ends up rocking, cracked and holding water two winters later.

The paving, and it really is your choice. Large format porcelain in a light grey, calibrated so every joint is even. Riven Indian sandstone, warm and hand cut. Limestone, granite for something dark and hard wearing, travertine if you can live with a surface that holds water. Nothing in Beacon Hill is ruled out by a designation, so pick what you want to look at and we will lay samples out wet before you commit.

Edges, steps and retaining. The perimeter is held with a haunched kerb or an edging bedded in concrete, retaining walls sit on a proper footing with a coping over them, and a gravel border runs along the house wall to take splashback. Steps get set at a rise you can walk in the dark rather than whatever the level happened to leave.

Where the water goes. The fall runs off the house into an ACO channel, an existing gully or a soakaway set clear of the foundations, with a permeable build up where the runoff has nowhere to travel. This part is not optional and it is not a matter of taste, which is why it sits on the quote as its own line.

Jointing, and the patio you have now. Joints take a brush in resin compound, a grout slurry or hand pointing in mortar. Where a patio has only lifted or sunk in one bay, or turned slippery with algae and shown efflorescence and staining, we quote the clean, the re-joint or the lift and relay rather than a rebuild you do not need.

You will not get a per square metre rate for a patio from us. The slabs are what you pick, and they are rarely the bulk of the cost.

Getting in. If a small digger can drive into the garden, the dig is quick. If every slab and every bag of spoil goes by barrow through a side gate or through the house, it is not.

Clearing first. Old concrete, a raised bed or big roots have to come out before anything goes down, and that waste is priced by the load.

The ground. On Beacon Hill's sand the stone sub-base is compacted in layers, often over a geotextile, because loose sand shifts and washes out under a thin base. Slabs set on a few dabs of mortar over a thin layer of sand will be rocking within a couple of winters.

Height and fall. The top of the patio has to finish two courses below the damp proof course and slope away from the wall. A Beacon Hill garden that sits higher than that needs a step, a retaining edge or a channel drain, and each adds time.

Joints. A brush-in compound, a pointed mortar joint and a slurry grout suit different stone, and porcelain needs a primer and a jointing product of its own.

When comparing, ask how deep they will dig and what goes in underneath, whether the slabs are on a full wet bed or on dabs, where the rain will drain, and whether edging and steps are in the price.

We work from a base in Boscombe, 9.8 miles from Beacon Hill, and lay patios across BH16, including Sturminster Marshall, Henbury and the roads towards Lytchett Minster. Dorset Council covers planning and building control. The firm is Bournemouth Roofing & Building Ltd, registered in England and Wales, company number 15471719. Before you book a visit in Beacon Hill, you can read our customers' Google reviews, word for word, on our reviews page.

Thomas Hannen owns the firm; he measures up the garden and writes the price himself. We hold a verified customer's 10 out of 10 on Checkatrade, which you can read before you ring. The site visit and the written itemised quote cost nothing. The rule that rainwater stays on your land applies at the front as well, which matters for a driveway at Beacon Hill.

Most repairs in Beacon Hill 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.