Patios in Christchurch, on ground with no fall
Between the Avon and the Stour the land barely slopes, so where the water leaves a patio has to be decided before anybody picks a slab.
The site visit is free and so is the written itemised quote. Thomas Hannen prices every job himself.
Christchurch sits low and almost flat where the Avon meets the Stour, and that is the single biggest thing about laying paving here. A garden with no natural slope has nowhere to send its water, so the falls have to be built into the job rather than found on site.
People ring about a terrace that stays wet for days after rain, a doorway where the paving has crept up over the years until it sits level with the threshold, or a slab that has dropped at one corner and now rocks.
All three come back to levels. We take a laser off the back door, check where the damp proof course actually sits, and work out where the water is going before we talk about slabs. Then you get one written itemised quote with the dig, the sub base, the drainage, the paving and the jointing on their own lines. The site visit and the quote are free.
The work
Levels first, then the paving, on the flat ground here
Setting the falls. A patio wants a steady fall away from the house, and on ground this level it has to be cut into the sub base rather than hoped for. On a garden that runs the wrong way we drop the far edge, put a linear channel along the low side and take the runoff to a gully or a soakaway well clear of the footings.
The damp proof course. Approved Document C expects finished ground to sit two brick courses, roughly 150mm, below the damp course. A good many terraces in the older parts of town have been re-laid over the top of the last one and are now above it. Where the threshold is low, the answer is a recessed channel drain across the door, not another lift of build up.
The dig and the muck away. Out comes the old bedding sand, the broken concrete, the roots and any made ground, down to a formation we can compact. That spoil is priced by the load, it goes into a grab lorry or a skip, and it leaves with us. We are registered to carry waste.
Sub base and bedding. Geotextile membrane where the ground is soft, then MOT Type 1 in compacted layers. Slabs go on a full wet mortar bed, with a slurry primer painted onto the back of porcelain and dense stone. Five dabs and a prayer is how a patio ends up rocking, and it is still the commonest thing we find under a failed one.
Porcelain, sandstone, limestone and granite. Porcelain is dense, barely takes water and stays cleanest on a shaded terrace. Sandstone is warm and easy to work but porous. Limestone is quieter and marks with iron. Granite is the toughest and the least likely to move. Calibrated slabs are sawn to one thickness and lay quickly; hand cut stone varies, so the bed does the levelling.
Steps, edges and retaining. A step down to a lawn goes off a footing with a coping or bullnose front. Anything holding soil back gets a haunched retaining course and a land drain behind it, because water trapped behind an edging is what pushes it out of line.
Jointing and finishing. Joints are brushed in with a two part compound in damp conditions and tooled off. A sand and cement grout in the wrong weather hazes the stone and lifts out in strips by spring.
Putting an existing terrace right. Re-bedding a sunken bay, cutting out cracked slabs, re-pointing washed out joints, and clearing algae and efflorescence off paving that is otherwise sound.
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.
Christchurch Central is a conservation area and the town carries a couple of dozen listed entries, so appearance is controlled in a way it is not in Somerford or Mudeford. A patio behind a house is rarely the issue; a frontage, a boundary wall or a set of steps you can see from the street can be. Where a building is listed, the consent covers the ground attached to it as well, and BCP Council keeps the listed entries. We check the address before quoting anything visible from a public road.
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 Victorian terrace in the old town with a passage to the back, a post war semi off Barrack Road, and a bungalow in Somerford with a driveway to the gate 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. Christchurch is four miles from us, so we can normally take a look within a day or two. The phone is answered 24 hours for emergencies; scheduled work runs Monday to Friday, 8am to 6pm.
Worth knowing
Gardens with nowhere for the water to go
The town sits on the flat between two rivers, and a great many gardens here have less than a foot of fall from the back door to the fence. On sloping ground you can let a patio drain into a border and forget about it. Here you cannot, and it shows up in the same way every time: a wet patch that never dries, moss in the joints, and a tide mark on the brickwork where water has been standing against the wall.
What it changes is the order of the job. Before anybody chooses a slab, somebody has to decide where the water leaves. That is usually a linear channel along the low edge running to a gully, or a soakaway dug well away from the house, and on ground where the water table sits high a soakaway wants a trial hole first because it can simply fill up and stay full.
It also changes what a permeable build is worth. Slabs laid with open joints over a free draining base, the way BS 7533-13 sets it out, let a flat garden take its own rain. On the right garden that is money better spent than an upgrade in paving.
Who you are dealing with
A local firm you can check
We cover Christchurch town, Purewell, Stanpit, Somerford and out to Mudeford, broadly BH23, 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
Christchurch questions we get asked
My garden is dead flat. Can a patio still drain properly?
Yes, but the fall gets built rather than found. We cut it into the sub base, usually about one in eighty away from the house, and pick up the low edge with a channel. It is a bit more dig and a bit more base, and it is the difference between a dry terrace and a wet one.
The paving outside my back door is level with the threshold. Is that a problem?
It is. Ground that sits at or above the damp proof course lets water track into the wall, and you tend to see it inside as a damp band along the skirting. The fix is to drop the level and put a drainage channel across the door.
Does the Christchurch Central designation reach into back gardens?
A patio in a back garden almost never needs it. What gets looked at is anything visible from the street, and any work to a listed building or the ground around it. We check the address and tell you which of those you are in before we quote.
Should I be putting a soakaway in at all here?
Sometimes, and it is worth digging a trial hole to find out. Where the water table is high the hole fills and stays full, and the honest answer then is a positive outfall to a drain rather than a soakaway that only works in August.
What does a week on site actually look like?
Most run to a working week or so: a day or two of dig and muck away, a day on the base, two or three laying, then the jointing once the bed has gone off.
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Get the levels checked before you choose paving
Thomas comes out, takes levels off the back door, finds the damp course and prices the dig, the drainage and the paving in writing. The visit and the quote are free.