Patios in Downton

Getting in and out is planned first. A micro digger fits through most standard side gates and through some hallways on boards. Where nothing fits, the dig is done by hand and barrowed out, and the spoil goes into bulk bags or a skip on the street. A skip standing on the highway is permitted and arranged beforehand, not on the morning. Floors and door frames get boarded and sheeted before anything crosses them.

What comes out. Old concrete, flags on a sand bed, brick paviours, a raised bed built off the wall, roots and made ground. On a small courtyard that can still be several tonnes, which is why muck away is priced by the load rather than by the metre.

The sub base. Geotextile separator over soft ground and MOT Type 1 in compacted layers of about 100mm. It is tempting to cut this short when every barrow is hand hauled, and it is the one thing that must not be cut short, because an uncompacted base is what a rocking patio actually is.

Porcelain. Calibrated twenty millimetre porcelain suits a small enclosed Downton garden: it is dense, takes almost no water and stays clean in a space that gets little sun. It goes on a full bed of mortar over a slurry primed back, never on dabs.

Stone. Sandstone is warm, easy to cut and forgiving, though porous, so it greens in a shaded courtyard. Limestone is more even and marks with iron. Granite is dense and hard wearing and handles heavy foot traffic. Travertine is not one for a wet winter. Hand cut stone varies in thickness so the mortar bed levels it; calibrated stone is sawn to one depth and lays faster in a tight space.

Falls, levels and the damp course. Paving falls away from the building and finishes two courses below the DPC where the garden allows, as Approved Document C sets out. In an enclosed yard the water has nowhere obvious to go, so it is taken to a gully proved to run, a soakaway where the ground takes it, or a permeable build holding the runoff on your land.

Edges, steps and jointing. Edging bedded and haunched in concrete, a coping to any low retaining wall, 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 a rocking slab, rebuilding a sunken corner, swapping cracked units, renewing failed jointing and correcting falls on a terrace that holds water.

Thomas comes out to Downton to look at the garden, how the ground sits against the house, and how we will get materials in. The quote prices digging out and taking the soil away, the sub-base, the falls and where the water drains, edgings and steps, the slabs you choose and the jointing, each on its own.

Getting in is the first question. A cottage in one of the old Downton terraces can have no rear access at all, so the old ground comes out and the stone comes in by barrow through the house, with floors and doorways protected. A semi with a shared passage means keeping the neighbours' way clear. A bungalow with a side gate is simpler. No trench is left open overnight, the site is swept each day and the spoil leaves with us. An old slab, buried rubble or a drain in the way is shown to you in a photo, with a price, before we touch it.

A patio at the back is not building control work. At the front, a boundary wall taken down for access or a tree cut back can be separate questions, especially where the house is listed or lies within the Downton Conservation Area, which covers the historic core. The Planning Portal covers the permissions that sit alongside permitted development, and Wiltshire Council is the authority for Downton.

If a slab has lifted at a corner, a step has sunk or your Downton patio has turned green and slippery, ring rather than using the form. Mark the trip with a pot or a chair and keep people off the slippery part.

On the first visit we re-lay the worst slabs, check whether the base underneath has washed out, and clean a slippery surface if that is the problem. Tell us whether there is a side gate, as it decides what we bring. Scheduled work is Monday to Friday, 8am to 6pm. If someone could trip, phone us, and if nobody picks up you will get a call back as soon as we can manage it.

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A good share of the older housing in Downton is terraced or in a close row, and those gardens have one route in: through the house or over a wall. That is not a reason to build a lesser patio. It is a reason to plan the job differently, and to price it honestly rather than discovering it on day two.

In practice it means small deliveries staged rather than a full load dropped on the pavement, boards and sheeting down before anything comes through, bulk bags or a permitted skip for the spoil, and a day or two longer on site than the same garden would take with a wide gate. It also means we would rather use calibrated paving than hand cut, because a sawn slab of consistent depth is far quicker to lay when the mixer is on the street.

Where there is a neighbour's passage or a shared route involved, we ask first. And where the work touches a shared or party boundary, whether that is a retaining edge against next door's wall or a dig close to its footing, the party wall rules are worth reading before anybody starts, because a conversation in advance is easier than one afterwards.

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

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