Patios in Bournemouth, private and communal
Half the homes here are flats, so a lot of this work is a shared terrace, and a surface several households cross in the dark is a different specification altogether.
The site visit is free and so is the written itemised quote. Thomas Hannen prices every job himself.
Half the homes in Bournemouth are flats, so a good share of the patio work here is a shared terrace rather than one household's back door. That changes who signs the quote, and it changes the paving, because a surface several households cross in the dark has to stay safe when it is wet.
The calls come in three shapes. A slab that rocks underfoot and has lifted at one corner. A terrace that has sunk away from level and now holds a puddle against the wall. And a shaded seating area that goes green every autumn and is genuinely slippery by November.
None of those is a paving problem. A patio is a dig, a sub base, a set of falls and an edge, with slabs on top, and when it goes wrong it is almost always the part you cannot see. We lift a couple of slabs, look underneath and take levels off the building before anything is priced. You get a written itemised quote with the excavation, the base, the paving and the jointing on separate lines, free.
The work
What we lay, and what we take up, around Winton and Moordown
Porcelain. Twenty millimetre calibrated porcelain is what most people ask for now, and on a shared or shaded terrace it is usually right. It takes almost no water, so algae have little to hold on to, and a textured finish keeps its grip in the wet. It goes on a full mortar bed with a slurry primer on the back of every slab, never on dabs. A porcelain slab with voids under it cracks the first time a planter goes down hard on it.
Sandstone, limestone and granite. Sandstone is warm and easy to cut, but it is porous, so it stains and greens on a north facing wall. Limestone is quieter in colour and marks with iron. Granite is the hardest of the three and the least likely to move. Hand cut stone varies in thickness, so the mortar bed does the levelling; calibrated stone is sawn to one depth and lays much faster.
The dig, and what leaves site. Old concrete, 1970s pressed flags bedded on sand, a raised bed, or a stump and its roots all come out first, and that is the part nobody budgets for. Spoil goes into a grab lorry or a skip and leaves with us. We are registered to carry waste, and the duty of care on waste is why you should ask anyone quoting where the muck actually goes.
The sub base. We dig to a firm formation, lay a geotextile membrane where the ground is soft, then bring MOT Type 1 up in compacted layers rather than one deep dump of hardcore. A whacker plate over 150mm in one go leaves the bottom half loose, and that is what a rocking patio is.
Falls, levels and the damp proof course. Paving runs away from the building and finishes clear of the damp proof course, which Approved Document C puts at two brick courses below. Where a back door sits low, that means a channel drain across the threshold running to a gully or a soakaway, or a step down, rather than building the level up against the wall.
Steps, edgings and retaining. Steps go off a proper footing with a coping or a bullnose front. Any edge holding soil back gets a retaining course haunched in concrete with a land drain behind it. An unhaunched edging is the commonest reason a patio spreads and drops at its border.
Jointing. We brush in a two part compound in the wet, tool the joints off and clean the slabs before it goes off. Done properly it stays put for years. A cement grout in the wrong weather hazes the stone and the pointing lifts out in strips the following spring.
Repairs. Plenty of what we do here is not a new patio: lifting and re-laying a sunken bay, cutting out cracked slabs, re-bedding a rocking step, or raking out washed out joints and re-pointing them.
How it runs
From your call to a written price
Same team from first visit to last, one person to ring, and no sub-contracting your work out to somebody you have never met. The quote is itemised, not a figure on the back of a card: excavation and muck away, the sub base, the falls and where water goes, edgings and steps, the slabs themselves, and jointing on separate lines, so you can compare it properly against anyone else's.
Nothing is left open or unusable overnight. The site is swept at the end of each day rather than the end of the job, and what comes out leaves with us. If something turns up once we start that nobody could have seen, you get a photograph and a price before we carry on.
Paving a back garden is normally permitted development, because the permitted development rules allow hard surfacing within the curtilage of a house. What needs planning permission is a raised platform more than 300mm above the ground, which is where level access terraces trip up, and where a retaining wall gets tall enough to be structural it becomes building control work too. Winton and Moordown sit in no conservation area, but the boundaries do not follow the streets you would expect, so we check an address first and the council keeps the list.
Cost
What decides the price of a patio
No rate per square metre, because the slabs are the part you choose and the smallest part of the price.
Getting to it. A terraced house off Charminster Road with a side gate, a 1930s semi with a shared alley, and a block of flats where everything goes through a communal door are three different jobs before a slab is cut. Everything comes in and goes out through the garden, often through a side gate or the house. A patio you can barrow to directly is a different job from one where every slab is carried. The work at height rules still apply to the dig and the machinery.
What is coming out before anything goes down. An old concrete slab, a raised bed, tree roots or made ground all have to be dug out and taken away, and that is priced by the load rather than by the metre. The dig is where a patio quote is won or lost.
Falls, levels and the damp course. A patio has to fall away from the house and finish at least two courses below the damp proof course, and getting that right often means steps, a retaining edge or a drainage channel. Laying a new patio up against a wall at the wrong level is the single most expensive mistake on this kind of job.
Comparing quotes? Ask how deep the dig goes and what sub base is specified, whether the slabs are laid on a full wet bed or on dabs, what the falls are and where the water goes, whether edgings and steps are included, and what the jointing compound is. Two quotes for the same job are usually two different jobs.
If it has become a hazard
A patio that has lifted, sunk or turned slippery
Ring rather than use the form. A slab that has lifted at one corner or a step that has dropped is a trip, and a north facing patio in winter can be genuinely dangerous. We can usually lift and re-lay the worst of it quickly, then look properly at whether the base under the rest has gone. We are under two miles away, so a Bournemouth address is usually looked at the same week. The phone is answered 24 hours for emergencies; scheduled work runs Monday to Friday, 8am to 6pm.
Worth knowing
Patios that more than one household walks on
Half the dwellings here are flats, and that quietly changes the brief. A communal terrace, a bin store surround or the path across a shared garden is not somebody's private sun trap. It is a route people use at seven on a December morning, carrying shopping, in the dark, and often nobody living there is the person ordering the work.
Two things follow. The first is the surface: on your own patio a smooth honed sandstone is a fair choice, because you know your own steps, but on a shared route a textured porcelain or a flamed granite is worth the difference. The second is the water. A private garden can drain to a soft border. A courtyard hemmed in by buildings usually cannot, so the runoff has to be collected in a channel and taken somewhere that will take it.
So find out who owns the ground before you gather quotes, and ask for the slip resistance of the paving in writing. We write ours that way as a matter of course.
Who you are dealing with
A local firm you can check
We cover Winton, Moordown, Charminster, Springbourne and Queens Park, broadly BH8 and BH9, under Bournemouth, Christchurch and Poole Council. You are dealing with Bournemouth Roofing & Building, the trading name of 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
Bournemouth questions we get asked
Do I need the freeholder's permission to re-lay a communal terrace?
Almost certainly. The ground outside a flat usually belongs to the freeholder even where one household has the use of it, so the lease decides. Find that out before you gather prices.
What surface finish keeps its grip when it is wet?
A textured porcelain or a flamed granite. Both keep their grip wet because the surface is worked rather than polished. Smooth honed stone looks lovely dry and is the worst of the lot under a shaded wall in November.
Is my old concrete base any use under new paving?
Sometimes. If the concrete is sound, not cracked through and already falls away from the building, we prime it and bed onto it. If it rocks or ponds, laying over it buys the same problem a second time.
What is the white bloom on my new slabs?
Efflorescence. Salts in the bedding mortar travel up through the stone as it dries and leave a deposit. It is not a fault and it weathers off. Acid cleaners take it away faster and often take the face of the stone with it.
How much mess is it with no side access?
A fair amount, and we plan for it. Everything comes through on boards and sheeting, the dig goes out in barrow loads to a grab lorry, and the route is swept at the end of every day rather than the end of the job.
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Find out what is actually under your patio
Thomas comes out, lifts a slab, takes levels off the building and prices the dig, the base, the paving and the jointing in writing. The visit and the quote are free.