Patios in Southbourne

The old patio is dug out. Old slabs, the sand or mortar under them, any concrete and any made ground come out down to a formation that will compact. Tree roots are cut back properly rather than paved over. The muck away is priced by the load, and on a small Southbourne garden it is often the biggest single line.

The base. A geotextile membrane over anything soft, then MOT Type 1 laid and compacted in layers. Every slab then goes down on a full mortar bed. Slabs on dabs leave voids underneath, and voids are why the old patio rocks.

Porcelain. Dense and close to non-porous, so it shrugs off the damp sea air that keeps paving wet between showers in Southbourne, and algae have little to hold on to. It needs a slurry primer on the back of every slab to bond, and a textured finish if it will be in shade.

Sandstone, limestone and granite. Sandstone gives the warm, riven look that suits an Edwardian house, but it is porous and greens over faster. Limestone is quieter and marks more easily. Granite is the hardest wearing. Calibrated slabs are sawn to one thickness and lay truer and faster than hand cut.

Levels and the damp course. The finished patio has to sit at least two courses below the damp proof course and fall away from the house. Behind older houses the commonest fault is a patio laid up to the DPC or over an air brick. The fix is to drop the level, add a step down from the back door, and fit a channel along the threshold so rain cannot pond against the wall.

Drainage. The runoff goes to a border, a gully or a soakaway built to Approved Document H, or into a permeable build that holds it in the base and lets it away slowly.

Edgings, steps and jointing. Edgings haunched in concrete, a bullnose or coping on any step, and joints brushed in with a two part compound so they do not wash out or fill with moss the way sand joints do.

Repairs. Rocking slabs lifted and re-bedded, cracked ones cut out, washed out joints refilled, and algae or efflorescence cleaned off. We would talk you out of laying new slabs over the old patio: it raises the level towards the damp course and keeps the failed base underneath.

One person to ring about a Southbourne 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 at ground level in the back garden of a house rarely needs planning, but a raised terrace, a big change of level or a retaining wall can bring in planning or building control. Flats have no permitted development rights, so anything raised outside a flat is worth checking first. Close to Southbourne Grove, check the conservation area boundary as well: 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. If other flats cross the patio to reach the bins or a back door, tell the freeholder as well, because it is a shared route. 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.

Call now: 07435 839745

A lot of Southbourne's housing is flats, many of them in large Edwardian houses divided up long ago, and the garden behind is where patio plans get complicated. Sometimes the garden belongs to the ground floor flat and is written into its lease.

Sometimes a Southbourne flat's garden is common ground owned by the freeholder and shared with the flats upstairs, with a path across it to the bins or a rear door. The lease plan says which, and it is worth ten minutes before anyone draws a patio on it.

If the garden is yours, the lease may still need the freeholder's consent for alterations, and a patio dug in against the building's wall touches something they own. If it is shared, the freeholder places the order, and where the cost comes back through the service charge they must consult leaseholders first under section 20 of the Landlord and Tenant Act 1985. Either way, keep the route the other flats use, and keep the new level below the damp course, because that wall is everybody's. We price the job so it can be circulated, and phase it so the path to the bins stays open.

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

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