Patios in East Boldre

The dig goes deep. Old concrete, tired flags on a sand bed, a raised bed, made ground, or roots spreading in from a boundary all come out first. On East Boldre ground we excavate until the formation stops moving under a boot rather than to a number written on a quote, and that is often deeper than people expect. Spoil is wet and heavy, so it is loaded to a grab lorry or a skip and leaves with us.

Separator and sub base. A geotextile membrane goes over soft formation so the stone cannot work its way down into it, then MOT Type 1 in compacted layers of about 100mm. That separator is the difference between a base that stays a base and one that slowly sinks into the wet ground under it.

Porcelain. Calibrated twenty millimetre porcelain is the sensible choice on damp East Boldre ground: it absorbs almost nothing, so algae have very little to hold and frost has nothing to open up. Full bed of mortar over a slurry primed back, never dabs, because a void under a dense slab becomes a crack the first time something heavy lands on it.

Stone. Sandstone is warm, easy to cut and forgiving, but porous, so on a shaded plot it greens. Limestone is more uniform and marks with iron. Granite is the densest and the least likely to move once it is bedded. Travertine will not enjoy a wet East Boldre winter. Hand cut stone varies in thickness so the bed does the levelling; calibrated stone is sawn to one depth and lays faster.

Falls and the damp proof course. The paving runs away from the building rather than along the wall, and it finishes two courses below the DPC where the garden allows, which is what Approved Document C is for. Water goes to a gully that has been proved to run, a soakaway where the ground will genuinely take it, or a permeable build with an open graded base so the runoff stays put.

Edges and retaining. On soft ground the edge is not optional. Edging is bedded and haunched in concrete, a coping caps a low retaining wall, a kerb line separates paving from grass, and a gravel border along the house takes the drip. Without a restrained edge the outer course walks and the jointing opens.

Jointing. Stone gets hand pointing in a matched mortar or a brush in compound worked into a full joint. Porcelain takes a grout made for a dense unit. Joints filled short are how water gets into the bed, and on wet ground that is the start of the staining and the frost lifting.

Repairs. Re-bedding rocking slabs, rebuilding a sunken bay, replacing cracked units, raking out failed jointing and correcting falls on a terrace that will not dry.

Thomas checks your East Boldre garden, the levels against the house, the height of the damp proof course and how materials will get in. The quote then prices the dig and taking the soil away, the compacted sub-base, the falls and the drain for the water, edgings, any steps, the slabs and the jointing. Thomas is your contact while it is built.

On wet gravel over clay an East Boldre patio needs a good depth of compacted sub-base and a steady fall away from the house, with the water sent somewhere it can go, because clay takes it in slowly. Access differs: barrows down a narrow passage beside a cottage, a micro digger through a bungalow gate, or a machine straight in through a field entrance. Trenches are never left open overnight, the garden is swept each evening and the spoil goes with us. An old slab or a drain found in the way is priced and shown to you before we deal with it.

Planning here is the job of the National Park Authority, not the district, so anything visible from the road gets closer design scrutiny, and East Boldre lies in the Forest South East Conservation Area on top. The NPA's property map shows what covers an address. A garden patio is not building control work, though a connection into existing drainage can be. Neighbouring Boldre has its own page.

A slab that has lifted, a step that has dropped, or an East Boldre patio gone green and slippery under the trees is worth a phone call, not the form. Stand a pot on the trip and keep people off the slippery bit.

The first visit re-lays the worst slabs and checks whether the base has washed out or the clay has moved. A photo taken in the wet helps, because it shows where the ground holds water. We book planned jobs Monday to Friday, 8am to 6pm. If a person could fall, ring, and should nobody pick up we phone you back soon after.

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Out towards the open forest the topsoil sits over ground that stays damp most of the year and squashes under load. That is fine for grass and poor for paving. A patio needs a formation that does not move, and here that is usually further down than a standard build allows for.

The practical consequence in East Boldre is that the dig and the stone are a bigger share of the price than the slabs are, and any quote that does not say how deep it is going has left out the part that decides whether the patio is still flat in ten years. It also means more spoil leaves site, which is why the muck away is priced by the load rather than folded into a rate.

There is a second consequence worth knowing. Ground that holds water will not take a soakaway, so on these plots we design the falls to a positive outfall, a ditch or a border that can genuinely absorb it, or we build permeable, with an open graded stone reservoir under the paving and permeable jointing above it. BS 7533-13 sets out how that is put together. Deciding which of those applies is a job for a trial hole, not a guess from the doorway.

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

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