Patios in Thorney Hill

Settling the height before anything else. In Thorney Hill, inside the National Park, the question that decides a patio is not what it is made of, it is how far it stands above the ground. Paving on the ground is ordinarily permitted development; a platform built up above it is not, and nor is a wall along a boundary. We settle that at the survey.

Keeping it low, and getting the fall anyway. The way to stay out of trouble is to dig down rather than build up, which happens to be the right answer for the house as well. We chalk the DPC on the brickwork, finish the paving two courses below it, and detail the threshold with a recessed channel where a flush doorway is wanted rather than adding height.

The dig and the muck away. Turf and topsoil, old concrete, flags bedded on sand, roots and any made ground, all excavated to formation. Access along the Thorney Hill lanes varies, so the quote says whether the spoil leaves by barrow through a side gate or by machinery into a skip, priced by the load.

Base and bed. Geotextile membrane, MOT Type 1 hardcore compacted in layers, a sharp sand screed to level it, then a full bed of mortar under every slab with a slurry primer on the back. A proper mortar bed does not go hollow. Dabs do, and a hollow slab is the one that ends up rocking, cracked and holding water.

Materials that suit the setting. Riven Indian sandstone and a soft buff limestone weather in and sit well against the older Thorney Hill cottages. Porcelain is calibrated, takes on almost no water and is easiest to keep clean out of sight of the lane. Granite is dense and dark, travertine holds water. Samples get laid out wet against your own wall.

Walls, edges and steps. Retaining walls sit on a footing with a coping over them, the perimeter is held with a haunched kerb or an edging bedded in concrete, and a gravel border runs along the wall to take splashback. Height limits apply to boundary and retaining walls in their own right, which is worth checking before a design is settled.

Where the water goes. The fall runs off the house into an ACO channel, an existing gully or a soakaway set well clear of the foundations, with a permeable build up where the runoff has nowhere to travel. Out in Thorney Hill there is rarely a convenient drain, so this is a designed part of the job rather than an afterthought.

Jointing, and the paving you already have. Joints take a brush in resin compound, a grout slurry or hand pointing in mortar, never loose sand. Where a patio has only lifted or sunk in one bay, or gone slippery with algae and shown efflorescence and staining, we quote the clean, the re-joint or the lift and relay rather than a rebuild.

The paving you pick out is normally the cheapest part of the job. The ground and the route in decide the rest.

Getting materials in. A Thorney Hill cottage on a lane with one narrow gate, a paddock plot where a digger and a skip can drive on, and a house where everything crosses the kitchen are different jobs, and every slab carried by hand adds time. Work at height rules still apply around machinery and raised edges.

The ground and the trees. Clay under a lawn moves with the seasons, and roots near a patio lift slabs. That means a deeper, better compacted sub-base and sometimes a root barrier, and the spoil goes away by the lorry load.

Levels against the house. The surface has to slope away from the house and sit two brick courses under the damp proof course. On a long flat garden that can mean a drainage channel along the wall, because the clay will not take the water.

Laying. Porcelain, sandstone and concrete slabs go on a full mortar bed, porcelain needs a slurry primer, and each has its own jointing.

Compare quotes on dig depth, a full mortar bed against spot dabs, and the route the water takes off the patio.

The drive from our base in Boscombe to Thorney Hill is 6.8 miles. We build patios across Thorney Hill, Bransgore, Holmsley and the lanes towards Burley, broadly BH23, in the New Forest National Park. Bournemouth Roofing & Building Ltd is registered in England and Wales; its company number is 15471719. Before you book a visit in Thorney Hill, you can read our customers' Google reviews, word for word, on our reviews page.

The owner, Thomas Hannen, walks the garden with you and does the pricing. One verified Checkatrade customer marked us 10 out of 10. The site visit and the itemised written quote cost nothing. Raising a front drive causes the same planning question, and a driveway at Thorney Hill is dug down for the same reason.

Most repairs in Thorney Hill 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.