Patios in Crossways

Clearing and digging out start the job. Turf, topsoil, an old concrete base from a shed, a 1980s slab terrace or brick paviours all come out first. We dig to firm formation and take the spoil away, loaded to a grab lorry or a skip. On a modern Crossways plot there is often more of it than people expect, because the ground has been built up rather than dug down.

The sub base. Geotextile separator where the formation is soft, then MOT Type 1 in compacted layers of about 100mm. This is the whole difference between a patio that stays flat and one that is rocking in a few winters, and it is the line most cheap quotes shorten.

Porcelain. Calibrated twenty millimetre porcelain suits these Crossways gardens well. Dense, effectively no water absorption, easy to keep clean, and textured finishes grip well wet. It has to be laid on a full bed of mortar over a slurry primed back, never on dabs, because a void under a dense slab becomes a crack.

Stone. Sandstone is warm and forgiving and the friendliest to work with, but porous, so it stains and greens in shade. Limestone is more uniform and marks with iron. Granite is dense and very hard wearing. Travertine looks good and behaves worst in a wet winter. Hand cut stone varies in thickness so the mortar bed does the levelling; calibrated stone is sawn to one depth.

Falls, levels and the damp course. Even on a level plot the paving is laid to a fall away from the house and finished two courses below the DPC, which is what Approved Document C is about. Modern houses often have the damp course close to the ground, so on some plots that means a shallow step down rather than a flush walk out.

Where the water goes. A sealed surface has to shed to somewhere on your own ground: an existing gully proved to still run, a soakaway where the ground drains, or a permeable build with an open graded base and permeable jointing. BS 7533-13 covers permeable construction, and Approved Document H covers surface water drainage.

Edges, steps and jointing. Edging bedded and haunched in concrete, a coping to a low retaining wall, a kerb line at the lawn and a gravel border along the house. Stone is hand pointed in a matched mortar or given a brush in compound worked into a full joint; porcelain takes a grout made for dense units.

Repairs. Re-bedding rocking slabs, rebuilding a sunken bay, swapping cracked units and replacing jointing that has washed out and gone to weed.

Thomas visits, walks the garden, takes levels off the damp proof course and notes which way the ground falls, then prices it himself. The quote separates excavation, muck away and sub base from the falls and drainage, edgings and steps, the paving itself, and the jointing. Thomas stays your contact through the digging, laying and pointing.

Most gardens in Crossways are fairly level and square, behind houses and bungalows with a side gate or a path down the side. Where the gate is wide, a small digger can get through. Where it is not, the dig is done by hand and barrow, and the quote says so. Mid terraces with a shared rear path need everything carried through, so we agree times with neighbours. Paths are protected, the garden is tidied each evening, and all the spoil is taken away. Should we dig into an old concrete slab, a buried drain or tree roots, you see a photo and a price before we carry on.

This is one of the few places around Crossways with no heritage constraint at all: no conservation area and nothing listed, so a back garden patio is ordinary permitted development and the stone is your choice. Water is the rule that still applies. The Planning Portal paving guidance explains why a sealed surface has to deal with its own run off.

A corner that has lifted, or a sunken step, will trip someone, and a shaded, north facing patio grows slippery algae in winter. Put a pot or a marker on anything that has moved.

Take a photo of where the water stands after heavy rain, because it usually tells us whether the falls or the base have failed. On made ground a slab that rocks often means water is getting under it. We relay the worst slabs or treat the slippery ones at the first visit, and check the base before pricing anything further. Patio work runs Monday to Friday, 8am to 6pm. For a real hazard, speak to us on the phone instead of using the form, and if we miss the call, we return it as soon as we can.

Call now: 07435 839745

Most of Crossways went up from the 1970s onwards, and on estate housing of that age the garden is very often made ground: subsoil, site arisings and whatever else was to hand, levelled off and turfed. It looks like a lawn and it behaves nothing like undisturbed ground.

That matters in one direction only, and it is the direction that costs money later. Made ground has not consolidated evenly, so a patio laid on a thin bed over it settles in patches rather than as a whole. You get one corner low, a slab that rocks, and a puddle where the fall used to run. It also holds more water than people expect, which is why a soakaway on some of these plots empties far more slowly than the sandy ground nearby suggests it should.

So the survey in Crossways is a hole in the lawn rather than a lecture about the village. If the ground is firm and sandy at spade depth, the build is straightforward and the dig is modest. If the spade goes through loose fill, the answer is to dig deeper, get a separator down and put more stone in. Knowing which of those you have before the quote is written is the point, and it is the reason the price on the paper is the price at the end.

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

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