Patios in New Milton
A lot of gardens on the newer streets here are barely bigger than the patio, which means the paving has to handle all the rain that used to land on grass.
The site visit is free and so is the written itemised quote. Thomas Hannen prices every job himself.
Where a patio takes up most of the garden, it stops being a seating area and becomes the drainage. Falls, a channel and a legal outfall are then the difference between a terrace you enjoy and a puddle against the back wall.
Three complaints come up again and again. Water standing along the house after every shower. A slab that tips at one corner beside the door. And a small garden that people want paved end to end because the grass never recovers from a wet winter.
All of them are settled by levels and by where the water is allowed to go. We lift a slab, look at the bed, run a level off the damp proof course and work out what the surface will have to shed once the lawn has gone. Then it goes into one written itemised quote with the dig, the muck away, the sub base, the edgings, the paving and the jointing on their own lines. The site visit and the quote are free.
The work
Paving a small garden end to end
Clearing and digging out. Turf, borders, an old concrete path and any made ground left from the estate build come out until we reach a firm formation. The spoil goes by skip or grab lorry and is priced by the load. In a small garden it is a surprisingly big share of the job, because there is nowhere on site to put anything.
The base. Compacted hardcore, MOT type 1, in layers, then a full wet mortar bed with a slurry primer on the back of each slab. Not five dabs, and not a screeded sand bed. A void under a slab holds water, and in a garden where every drop lands on paving there is plenty of water looking for a void.
Setting out the falls. With no lawn left, the surface has to move all of it. That means a consistent fall away from the house across the whole area, not just near the doors, and often a fall in two directions with a valley into a channel. It is set out with a laser and string lines before a slab goes down, because it cannot be corrected afterwards.
Drainage. A channel drain along the low edge into a gully or a soakaway, so the runoff stays on your ground rather than heading for next door or the road. Where there is any planting left, a permeable border along a fence line takes a useful share of it and costs almost nothing.
Materials. Porcelain suits these gardens: calibrated, no water taken up, a published slip rating and very little upkeep. Sandstone, limestone, granite and travertine are warmer and uncalibrated, so each slab is bedded to its own thickness. Everything is primed and bedded full.
Thresholds and the damp proof course. The paving stops at least two courses below the DPC and falls away from the wall. Where patio doors sit low, a threshold drain along the house takes the water at the frame instead of the level being built up to meet it.
Edges, steps and boundaries. A haunched kerb or a retaining course with a coping around the perimeter, steps of an even rise where there is a change of level, and the edge kept clear of a neighbour's fence posts so nothing is undermined and no water is pushed under a panel.
Repairs. Sunk and rocking slabs, a cracked step, algae on a shaded strip between two buildings, efflorescence and iron staining on newer stone.
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.
Paving a back garden at ground level is normally permitted development, so most of this needs no planning application and no building control notice. Raised platforms are the exception, along with a boundary or retaining wall above the usual heights, where the height rules apply. New Forest District Council is the planning authority, and it is worth a look at the other consents that can apply where a wall or a drain is part of the plan.
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 terraced house with a shared alley, a semi with a side gate and a bungalow you can barrow straight into are three different jobs before a pallet is ordered. 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. It is ten miles from us along the coast road, so a call here is normally looked at within a day or two. The phone is answered 24 hours for emergencies; scheduled work runs Monday to Friday, 8am to 6pm.
Worth knowing
When the patio is most of the garden
Much of New Milton went up in the 1980s and after, and those gardens were laid out small on purpose. Add a terrace, a shed and a path and there is often very little grass left. Plenty of people then decide to pave the lot, which is a perfectly sensible thing to want and changes the engineering completely.
A lawn is a soakaway you do not have to pay for. Take it away and every drop that falls on the plot has to be moved by the surface you have built. So the falls have to be right across the whole area rather than just by the back door, the channel has to be sized for the whole plot rather than a strip, and the outfall has to be something real: a gully, a proper soakaway with a test behind it, or a permeable margin the ground will genuinely accept. Sending it over the boundary is not an option and it causes arguments that outlast the patio.
The other thing worth doing in a small garden is leaving one narrow planted border along a fence. It softens what would otherwise be a paved box, it takes a real share of the rain, and it gives the edge restraint something to sit against. It costs less than the paving it replaces.
Who you are dealing with
A local firm you can check
We cover New Milton, Ashley, Barton, Bashley and out towards Hordle, broadly BH25, under New Forest District 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
New Milton questions we get asked
Can I pave the whole of a small back garden?
Yes, provided the water has somewhere to go. Losing the lawn means losing the drainage, so the surface takes on the whole plot. That is a design question rather than a permission one in a back garden, and it should be answered on the quote.
Where is the rainwater supposed to go once the grass has gone?
Onto your own ground, not the neighbour's and not the road. In practice that means a channel drain to a gully or a tested soakaway, and often a permeable border along one boundary doing part of the work.
How much slope should the finished surface have?
Enough to move water reliably without anybody feeling it underfoot, set out with a laser across the whole area and always running away from the building. It is easy at the start and impossible to correct once the slabs are bedded.
Will paving up to the fence upset my neighbour?
It can if the edge undermines their posts or tips water under the panel. We keep the restraint clear of the fence line and take the fall away from it, which usually settles the matter before it becomes one.
Is porcelain the right choice for a small garden?
Often, yes. It stays clean, it does not soak up spills, and a light tone lifts a shaded space between buildings. Natural stone looks warmer, and in a small garden the extra washing down is more noticeable because you see the whole surface at once.
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Price the drainage, not just the paving
Thomas sets out the levels, works out where the water will go once the lawn has gone, and prices the whole job in writing. The visit and the quote are free.