Patios in Stourpaine

Clearing the ground. Old concrete, cracked flags on a sand bed, a brick terrace that has sunk, a raised bed or a set of roots all come out before anything is set out. We dig to firm formation, not to a fixed depth, and the spoil is loaded to a grab lorry or a skip and leaves with us the same week.

The base. A geotextile separator on soft ground, then MOT Type 1 in compacted layers of about 100mm. Hardcore tipped in one lift and given a single pass looks the same on the day and is the reason a patio is rocking three winters later.

Sandstone and limestone. Riven sandstone in the browns and buffs sits comfortably beside brick, flint and thatch, which is why it is what we most often suggest in the village. It is porous, so it wants a sealer if you are worried about stains, and it will green on a north wall. Limestone is quieter and more uniform but marks with iron.

Porcelain and granite. Calibrated twenty millimetre porcelain is dense, takes almost no water and stays clean, and in a muted riven effect it can look right here where a bright grey sawn finish would not. It must be laid on a full bed of mortar over a slurry primer, never on dabs. Granite setts and flags are the hardest wearing of the natural stones and suit an edge or a threshold.

Falls, levels and the damp course. Paving is set to fall away from the building rather than run along the wall, and it finishes two courses below the DPC where the garden allows it, which is what Approved Document C asks for. Where the garden is higher, we buy the clearance with a step, a retaining edge and a channel across the threshold. The water then has to go somewhere on your own ground: a gully that still runs, a soakaway where the ground will take it, or a permeable build so the runoff never reaches the lane.

Edges, steps and retaining. Edging bedded and haunched, a coping on a low retaining wall, a kerb line where the paving meets grass, and a gravel border along the house. On a plot that falls away, the steps and the level changes are set out first, because they decide how the whole terrace reads.

Jointing. Hand pointing in a mortar matched to the stone, or a brush in compound worked deep into a full joint. Porcelain takes a grout designed for a dense unit. A short joint lets water into the bed and brings back the algae, the weeds and the frost lifting.

Repairs. A rocking slab re-bedded, a sunken bay rebuilt, cracked units replaced, tired jointing raked out, and a slippery terrace cleaned and its falls corrected.

Same team from first visit to last, one person to ring, and no sub-contracting your work out to somebody you have never met. 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.

Stourpaine Conservation Area covers the village, and there appearance is controlled in a way it is not a mile down the road. Paving a back garden is still ordinary permitted development; changing a frontage, taking down a boundary wall or cutting a tree is not. There are twenty six listed entries in the parish, and Dorset Council holds the designations for the village. Paving itself is not building control work, although drainage tied into an existing system is.

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. One photograph of the slab that has moved and one of where the water stands will usually tell us whether it is a lift and relay or a rebuild. The phone is answered 24 hours for emergencies; scheduled work runs Monday to Friday, 8am to 6pm.

Call now: 07435 839745

A conservation area does not stop you laying a patio. What it does is put the appearance of anything visible from the street into the balance. In Stourpaine that catches front terraces, parking bays, steps up from the lane, and the boundary walls and railings that go with them. Behind the house, out of sight, the ordinary rules apply.

The parts that surprise people are not the slabs. Taking down a section of an old wall to widen an opening is controlled here, and so is work to a tree, which needs written notice to the council before anybody touches it. That matters for a patio because roots and overhanging branches are usually the first thing in the way of a dig. The Planning Portal covers walls and gates and the boundaries between what is permitted and what is not.

What it changes for us is the specification rather than the build time. We keep the historic wall wherever it can be kept, work the dig around a root plate instead of cutting through it, and steer the material towards a riven stone or a muted porcelain that sits with the brick and flint around it.

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