Patios in Sopley, against walls with no damp course

Reading the wall comes first. On a Sopley house a slate or bitumen damp course shows as a dark line two courses up. On a good many older cottages there is nothing there at all, and those walls rely on being able to dry out through their own face. Paving them in tight and running water at them takes that away.

Finishing low, and drained. Where there is a damp course, the finished ground goes two brick courses below it, the level Approved Document C works to. Where there is none, the answer is to keep the paving lower still and put a drained margin along the wall, a gravel strip or a channel drain, so splash and runoff are collected rather than thrown at the brickwork.

Digging against an old footing. Old Sopley walls often sit on shallow footings, sometimes little more than a widened course of brick. We hand dig the last stretch alongside them rather than run a machine up to the wall, because undermining a footing is a far more expensive problem than a patio.

The dig and the muck away. Old paving, bedding, concrete and any soft ground in a Sopley garden come out to a formation that will compact. Spoil is priced by the load, goes out in a grab lorry or a skip, and leaves with us.

Sub base and bedding. Geotextile membrane where the ground is soft, MOT Type 1 in compacted layers, then a full wet mortar bed with a slurry primer on the back of porcelain and dense stone. Dabs leave voids and voids crack slabs.

Choosing paving that suits an old building. Riven sandstone and limestone sit far more comfortably against brick and cob than a large format grey porcelain does. Granite is hard wearing and reads well as a step or an edge. Where a terrace is shaded, a textured porcelain is still the practical choice, and a smaller format helps it look at home.

Drainage. Runoff into a channel and out to a gully or a soakaway sited clear of the footings, or a permeable build with open joints, both judged against Approved Document H. Near the Avon it is worth proving a soakaway with a trial hole, because ground close to the river holds water through the winter.

Edgings, steps, jointing and repairs. Border edgings haunched in concrete, steps off a footing with a coping front, joints brushed in with a two part compound and tooled off. On existing terraces we re-bed slabs that have lifted or sunk, cut out cracked ones, re-point washed out joints and clear algae and efflorescence.

Carrying it in is the first cost. A detached house with a drive to the garden lets a small digger and a skip in. A mid-terrace with no side access means every slab and every bag of spoil goes through the house by hand, and that is the biggest single difference in labour.

The dig. An old concrete path, a shed base, a raised bed or tree roots all have to come out and go away, and that is priced by the load. On the sand and gravel here the spoil still bulks up once it is out, so the loads add up.

Level against the house. A patio must fall away from the wall and finish below the damp proof course. On a Sopley garden that slopes towards the house, that can mean a step down, a retaining edge or a channel drain along the wall.

Ground that stays wet. Sopley sits on sand and gravel by the Avon, where the water sits high in winter, so the sub base goes in on a membrane, well compacted, and the slabs go down on a full wet bed of mortar rather than on dabs.

The slabs. Natural stone, porcelain and concrete all cut and lay differently, and porcelain needs a slurry primer on the back and its own jointing compound.

Ask other quotes how deep the dig goes, what sub base is specified, whether the slabs are on a full bed or dabs, and where the water goes.

We cover Sopley, Ripley, Winkton and the lanes along the Avon towards Bransgore, broadly BH23, from a base in Boscombe 3.7 miles away. Sopley's planning authority is New Forest District Council. You would be dealing with Bournemouth Roofing & Building Ltd, registered in England and Wales, company number 15471719. Before you book a visit in Sopley, you can read our customers' Google reviews, word for word, on our reviews page.

The company is Thomas Hannen's, and Thomas is the one who looks at your garden and prices the patio. One verified customer scored us 10 out of 10 on Checkatrade. You are not charged for the visit, or for an itemised quote on paper. An old cottage front has the same wall with no damp course, and a driveway in Sopley is kept low against it in the same way.

Most repairs in Sopley 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.