Patios in Sixpenny Handley, digging on the chalk

What comes out. Old paving, its bedding, any old concrete and the topsoil are excavated back to a firm formation. In Sixpenny Handley that formation is often chalk, sometimes with a cap of clay with flints over it, and the spoil is bulky. It goes by the load, and the muck away is a proper line on the quote rather than something absorbed into a rate.

Protecting the formation. Chalk is strong while it is intact and it is ruined by water and by traffic. Left open in the rain the surface turns to slurry, and once it has done that no amount of whacking will bring it back. So in Sixpenny Handley we dig what we can build the same week, cover it if the weather turns, and keep the barrow runs off the exposed formation.

The sub base. MOT Type 1 in thin lifts, whacked to full compaction, taken out past the edge of the paving, with a geotextile separator between the stone and the subsoil. The separator earns its keep in Sixpenny Handley because it stops fines being pumped up into the hardcore when the ground is wet.

Full mortar bed. Slabs go on a full wet bed with a slurry primer on the back. Dabs leave voids, and on ground that holds water in the winter and shrinks back in a dry summer a void is the beginning of a rocking slab.

The paving itself. Porcelain is calibrated and consistent, needs no sealing and stays clean. Sandstone is riven and warm and each slab is bedded to its own thickness. Limestone reads well against flint and chalk walling and shows marks more readily. Granite is the toughest of them. Travertine is a sheltered courtyard material rather than an exposed downland one.

Falls and the damp course. The terrace falls away from the house and finishes at least two courses below the DPC. Where a threshold is too low we dig down rather than build up, because bridging a damp course puts water into the wall. Approved Document C sets out the standard.

Drainage on chalk. Chalk will often take water readily, so a soakaway can work well in Sixpenny Handley where it would not in a clay valley, but it has to be sited and sized rather than guessed. Otherwise it is a channel to a gully and an outfall, or a permeable build up over open graded stone that lets the runoff straight through the joints.

Edges, steps and jointing. A haunched edging or kerb where paving meets grass, a retaining edge with coping where a sloping garden is held back, and steps with equal risers. Joints are filled with a brush in resin compound worked wet and tooled off, or hand pointed on older stonework. Then the repairs: lifted slabs, a sunk bay, cracked stone, algae, efflorescence on new sandstone and staining.

We do not price a patio by the square metre. You pick the slabs, but they are rarely where most of the money goes.

How materials get in. A Sixpenny Handley cottage with a narrow side path, a farmhouse where a lorry can back into the yard, and a house on a sloping plot each move the price before any stone is chosen. If each slab and barrow of spoil goes through a gate or the house, those hours show up on the quote. On a sloping plot the work at height rules cover the cut face of the dig as well as any raised edge.

What comes out first. An old concrete base, a raised bed, tree roots or rubble have to be broken up and removed, and we price that by the lorry load. In Sixpenny Handley, chalk with flint in it is slower to dig than soft garden soil.

Levels and the damp course. The finished surface has to fall away from the house and stay a good two brick courses under the damp proof course. On a slope that can mean steps, a retaining edge or a channel drain, each with its own line.

How the slabs are bedded. A full bed of mortar under every slab lasts. A few dabs leave hollows that rock and crack.

Put these to any other quote: how deep the dig goes, what sub base is used, full bed or dabs, which way the water runs, what jointing compound goes in, and whether steps and edging are included.

Sixpenny Handley is a 17.1 mile run from our Boscombe base, and we lay patios there and in Woodcutts, Pentridge and the nearby Chase villages, all in Dorset Council's area. Thomas Hannen comes to your garden, checks the levels and prices the job himself.

His company, Bournemouth Roofing & Building Ltd, is registered in England and Wales with company number 15471719. One verified customer marked us 10 out of 10 on Checkatrade. The visit costs nothing, and the itemised quote comes in writing at no charge. Chalk turns to slurry under a front drive in the rain as well, and a driveway in Sixpenny Handley is dug in dry spells for the same reason. Before you book a visit in Sixpenny Handley, you can read our customers' Google reviews, word for word, on our reviews page.

Most repairs in Sixpenny Handley 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.