Patios in Crossways
Straightforward gardens, no heritage constraints, and one thing worth checking before the first slab goes down.
The site visit is free and so is the written itemised quote. Thomas Hannen prices every job himself.
Crossways is the easy end of this trade and it is worth saying so. There is no conservation area, nothing in the village is listed, and most of the plots are level, square and modern. The paving you want is the paving you can have, and the only real question is what is under the lawn.
The jobs reflect that. A first patio on a garden that has only ever had grass. A tired 1980s terrace of grey flags to be taken up and replaced with porcelain. A rocking, cracked run of paving beside a conservatory. And weeds through jointing that gave up years ago.
None of it is complicated, but the base still decides whether it lasts. We come out, dig a small hole, look at what the ground actually is under the turf, and take levels off the house. Then it is priced in writing and itemised: the dig, the muck away, the sub base, the paving, the edging and the jointing. Both the site visit and the quote are free.
The work
A straightforward garden, done once and properly
Clearing and digging out. 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 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 is the most popular thing we lay here. 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.
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.
This is one of the few places on our patch with no heritage constraint at all: no conservation area and nothing listed in the village, so a garden patio is ordinary permitted development and the material is genuinely your choice. The rule that still applies is water. The Planning Portal's paving guidance sets out why a sealed surface has to deal with its own runoff rather than send it to the 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 detached house with a wide side gate, a mid terrace with a shared path, and a bungalow with the garden straight off the drive are three different jobs before any paving is chosen. 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. A photograph of where the water stands after heavy rain usually tells us whether it is the falls or the base that has gone. The phone is answered 24 hours for emergencies; scheduled work runs Monday to Friday, 8am to 6pm.
Worth knowing
What is under the turf on a built up plot
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 here 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.
Who you are dealing with
A local firm you can check
We cover Crossways, Woodsford, Moreton, Warmwell and the villages east of Dorchester, broadly DT2, under Dorset 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
Crossways questions we get asked
Is a new patio here just permitted development?
For a garden patio, no. Nothing here is listed and there is no conservation area, so it is permitted development as long as the surface water stays on your own land.
Is the ground here good to build on?
Often yes at spade depth, but a lot of the gardens are made up ground from the estate build. That is why we dig a hole at the survey instead of assuming.
Can we have the patio flush with the back door?
Nearly flush, with a channel across the threshold. Fully flush would put the paving at or above the damp course, and that is how water finds its way into the wall.
Porcelain or sandstone for a family garden?
Porcelain if you want low maintenance and a surface that will not stain. Sandstone if you want the warmer look and are happy to clean and treat it now and then.
How many days does a rear terrace take on a level plot?
A straightforward rear terrace on a level plot is usually three to five days from the first dig to the last joint, weather allowing.
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Find out what is under your lawn before you commit
Thomas comes out, digs a hole, checks the levels and prices the dig, the base, the paving and the jointing in writing. The visit and the quote are free.