Patios in Milborne St Andrew

The old surface comes out first. Old concrete, a bed of 1960s slabs on sand, brick paviours sunk into the lawn, a raised bed built off the wall: it all has to be dug out and taken away before anything can be set out in a Milborne St Andrew garden.

We excavate to firm ground, dig out roots and made ground where we meet them, and the spoil goes into a grab lorry or a skip and leaves with us rather than sitting in a heap for a fortnight.

The sub base is the job. MOT Type 1 laid and compacted in layers of about 100mm on a geotextile separator over soft formation. A patio that rocks, sinks or lifts almost never has a slab problem; it has a base problem, and hardcore tipped in one lift and given a single pass with a whacker is the usual cause.

Porcelain. Calibrated twenty millimetre porcelain is dense, barely takes water and keeps its grip wet if the finish is textured. It goes on a full bed of mortar over a slurry primed back. Laid on dabs it sounds hollow, and the first dropped pot finds the void.

Sandstone, limestone and granite. Sandstone is the friendliest to lay and the warmest in colour, but porous, so it stains and greens where the sun does not reach. Limestone is more even and marks with iron. Granite is dense and hard wearing. Travertine is the worst of the four in a Dorset winter. Hand cut stone varies in thickness so the mortar bed does the levelling; calibrated stone is sawn to one depth.

Levels, falls and the damp proof course. A patio falls away from the house, not along the wall, and finishes at least two courses below the DPC, which is what Approved Document C is about. Where the ground outside is already at floor level, that is solved with a step, a retaining edge and a drainage channel across the threshold rather than by raising the paving up the wall. Then the water has to go somewhere on your own ground: a gully that still runs, a soakaway where the ground drains, or permeable jointing over an open graded base so the runoff never reaches the lane.

Edges and borders. Every patio needs something holding it in: edging bedded and haunched in concrete, a coping to a low retaining wall where the garden steps up, a kerb line against a lawn, and a gravel border so the eaves drip lands in stone rather than on the slabs.

Jointing. Stone is pointed by hand in a matched mortar, or a brush in compound worked into a full, deep joint. Porcelain takes a grout made for a dense unit. Joints left short are how water gets into the bed and how algae, weeds and frost damage begin.

Repairs. Re-bedding a rocking slab, rebuilding a sunken corner, swapping cracked units, raking out failed jointing, or cleaning down a slippery terrace and correcting its falls.

Thomas visits, looks at the Milborne St Andrew garden and marks out with you where the patio will go and how it meets the house. He checks the level of the damp proof course, which way the ground falls and how materials will get from the road to the back.

The written quote splits out the dig and the muck away, the depth of sub base, how the falls are set and where the water drains, any edgings and steps, the slabs, and the jointing. Thomas prices all of it and is your one contact throughout.

At many Milborne St Andrew houses everything goes in and out through a side gate or a passage, so the barrow route is agreed first and boards go down to protect lawns and paths. Slabs are laid on a full mortar bed, not on dabs, so nothing rocks or holds water underneath. The garden is left safe each evening and swept daily, and the spoil leaves with us. Old foundations, a drain run or roots you could not see are photographed and priced for you before we deal with them.

A patio in the back garden is normally permitted development, as long as the water stays on your own land. The conservation area over the heart of Milborne St Andrew is about how things look from the road, so it rarely touches a patio behind the house. What matters more is a listed building: there are a good number in and around the village, and work in the curtilage of a listed cottage can be a consent question. Dorset Council keeps the record of what is listed.

A slab lifted at one corner, a step that rocks underfoot or a north facing Milborne St Andrew patio gone green and slippery in winter can put someone on the ground. Mark the trip with a pot or a chair, and put down grit or sharp sand on a slippery patch until it can be treated.

Call us instead of using the form. Booked patio work runs Monday to Friday, 8am to 6pm, and if nobody picks up, we get back to you as soon as we can. We lift and re-bed the worst slabs to make it safe, and check whether the sub base under the rest has failed. A photo of where the water sits helps.

Call now: 07435 839745

Milborne St Andrew has its own conservation area, and there are nearly thirty listed entries here as well. Neither usually decides the slabs in a back garden. What they do reach is anything that touches the house or the boundary: if yours is listed, or sits in its curtilage, the protection follows the building, and inside the conservation area taking down a boundary wall to get a machine in can need permission first.

For a patio the parts that catch people out are rarely the slabs. Taking down an old boundary wall to get a machine in, fixing a handrail or a light into a listed elevation, forming steps against the building, or bedding paving hard up to an old plinth can all need consent when a terrace in the middle of the lawn does not. The Planning Portal sets out the other permissions that can sit alongside permitted development.

It changes what we do rather than whether we do it. Against a soft old wall we keep the patio clear of the fabric with a gravel margin and a channel, and we choose a riven stone that sits quietly beside brick and flint instead of a bright sawn finish. Where consent is genuinely needed we say so at the quote stage, not after the digger has arrived.

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

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