Patios in Post Green

Working out what is looked at and what is not. Paving a back garden at ground level is your business. A raised terrace, a new wall along a lane or a change that reads from the road is not, once you are inside the conservation area. We establish which side of that line your job sits on at the survey, before anything is priced or ordered.

The dig and the muck away. Old concrete, a set of flags bedded on sand, tree roots and, on the older plots, made ground with brick rubble through it. All of it is excavated to formation and taken off site. Access in Post Green varies enormously, so we say on the quote whether the spoil goes out by barrow through a side gate or by machinery to a skip.

Levels against the wall. We scrape back, chalk the DPC on the brickwork and set the finished paving two courses below it with a fall running off the house. Where the threshold has to stay flush, a recessed channel does the work a step would otherwise do.

Base and bed. Geotextile membrane, MOT Type 1 hardcore compacted in layers, a sharp sand screed to level it off, then a full bed of mortar under each slab with a slurry primer on the back. Never dabs. A slab on dabs is hollow; a full mortar bed is not, and hollow slabs finish up rocking, cracked and holding water.

Materials that sit right against old brick. Riven Indian sandstone and a buff limestone look at home next to weathered brick and rubble stone in a way a bright grey porcelain does not always manage. Porcelain is calibrated, easy to keep and excellent out of sight of the road. Granite is dense and dark, travertine holds water. We lay samples out wet against your own wall before you commit.

Walls, steps and coping. Retaining is common in Post Green because the ground moves about. Low walls go on a proper footing, edges are held with a haunched kerb and a coping throws the water clear, with a gravel border along the wall to take splashback. Where a wall will be seen, matching the brick or the stone is worth the trouble and worth asking about.

Where the water goes. A fall away from the house into an ACO channel, an existing gully or a soakaway set clear of the foundations, and permeable construction where the runoff has nowhere else to travel. This is Poole Harbour's catchment, so keeping surface water on the plot rather than pushing it into the lane is the right answer as well as the tidy one.

Jointing, and the paving you already have. Joints get a brush in resin compound, a grout slurry or hand pointing in mortar. Where a patio has only lifted or sunk in one corner, or gone green with algae and shown efflorescence and staining, we quote the clean, the re-joint and the lift and relay rather than the rebuild.

Getting in is the first cost here. A bungalow with a wide side access lets in a machine and a dumper. A cottage in Post Green where everything comes through the house, or a garden reached by a narrow lane, is slower, and every slab is carried.

What comes out. An old concrete patio, a rockery, tree roots or rubble left from when the estate was built all have to be dug out and taken away by the load.

Levels and the damp course. Many bungalows in Post Green have a back door only a step above the garden. The new patio has to finish below the damp proof course and fall away from the house, which sometimes means a channel drain or a step. On clay, water has to go to a border or soakaway, never the wall. Where a raised edge is involved, the work at height rules come into the dig and the machinery.

The slabs. Porcelain needs a full mortar bed and a primer on the back. Sandstone and other natural stone vary in thickness and take longer to lay level.

Ask any other firm how deep they dig and what sub-base they use, whether the slabs are fully bedded or on dabs, and where the water goes.

We work out of a base in Boscombe, not quite nine and a half miles from Post Green. Patios are something we lay across Post Green, Lytchett Minster, Upton and along the roads towards Sandford, broadly BH16, under Dorset Council.

The company is Bournemouth Roofing & Building Ltd, registered in England and Wales, number 15471719. Thomas Hannen is the owner; he checks the levels at your back door and prices the patio himself. One verified customer gave us 10 out of 10 on Checkatrade. We charge nothing to visit or to write you an itemised quote. A drive along the lane is visible, so a driveway in Post Green inside the conservation area is worth checking before work starts. Before you book a visit in Post Green, you can read our customers' Google reviews, word for word, on our reviews page.

Most repairs in Post Green need no application at all. What decides whether a change to the outside of your house does is who the council is, whether a conservation area or a listing applies, and whether the place sits in a protected landscape.