Patios in Parkstone

Sloping gardens get terraced. Where a Parkstone garden rises from the house, the answer is a level terrace by the back door, a retaining edge or low wall, and steps up to a second level or the lawn. Where it falls away, the patio is built up behind a retaining edge, with the fill compacted in layers so it does not settle. Steps get a bullnose or coping, an even rise and a going you can walk without looking down.

The dig and the base. Out comes the old concrete, the bedding, any roots and any made ground, down to a formation that will compact. MOT Type 1 goes in over a membrane in compacted layers, and the slabs are bedded on a full wet mortar bed, with a slurry primer on the back of every porcelain slab. Laid on five dabs of mortar, a patio rocks and cracks within a couple of winters, because water gets into the voids under each slab and the frost lifts it.

Choosing the stone. Porcelain is dense, keeps its grip when textured, and is the easiest to keep clean in a shaded garden. Indian sandstone is warm in colour and good value but porous, so it greens and stains faster. Limestone is quieter and marks with rust from furniture. Granite, flamed or bush hammered, is the hardest wearing and the best choice for steps. Calibrated slabs are sawn to one thickness and lay truer than hand cut.

Falls and where the water goes. A patio falls away from the house, gently enough to walk on and firmly enough to shed water. On a sloping garden the water from above has to be stopped too, so a channel drain along the top edge of a terrace, or at the foot of the steps, takes it to a gully or a soakaway rather than onto the paving. A permeable build over a free draining base is the other answer, and it is judged against Approved Document H.

Shared gardens behind flats. Where a Victorian house in Parkstone has been split into flats the garden is often shared, or divided between the ground floor flat and the freeholder. Paving it needs the freeholder's agreement before we dig, and we write the quote so it can go to them as it is.

Jointing, edgings and repairs. Joints are brushed in with a two part compound or pointed with mortar, because open sand joints fill with weed. Edgings are haunched in concrete so the border cannot creep. We also lift and re-bed rocking slabs, cut out cracked ones, re-point washed out joints, and clean off algae and the white bloom of efflorescence without stripping the face of the stone.

One person to ring about a Parkstone patio, from the first visit to the last. 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.

A patio in a back garden is usually permitted development, but a platform raised more than 0.3m needs planning permission, as does a wall over 2m high, or over 1m beside a road. Inside Ashley Cross conservation area, walls and anything seen from the street are looked at more closely, and the council keeps the list.

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. On a stepped garden, a step that has dropped or a slab rocking at the top of a flight is the one to deal with first, because a fall there is a fall down the steps. Scheduled work runs Monday to Friday, 8am to 6pm. For anything urgent, ring rather than use the form, and if we cannot pick up we ring you back as soon as we can.

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A lot of the houses in Parkstone predate the First World War, the Victorian and Edwardian villas and terraces of Lower Parkstone and the artisan streets up the hill among them. Those houses have solid walls, often only a slate damp course, and suspended timber floors ventilated by airbricks set low in the wall.

Over a century the ground at the back usually creeps up, with a path laid on a path and a patio on top of that, until it is level with the damp course or over it. Then the wall wicks water straight past it, the floor joists sit in damp air, and the owner calls a damp company.

So on a Parkstone period house the first job is often lowering the ground, not raising it. A new patio finishes at least two brick courses below the damp course, which is the level Approved Document C works to, and every airbrick stays clear and open. Where a back door sits too low for that, we step the patio down from the threshold, or leave a gravel strip and a channel drain against the wall so the paving never touches it. It costs a little more dig. It is far cheaper than drying out a floor.

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

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