Patios in Tolpuddle
Paving set out around cottages with deep overhanging eaves, where the drip line matters as much as the falls.
The site visit is free and so is the written itemised quote. Thomas Hannen prices every job himself.
The awkward part of a patio in Tolpuddle is usually the last three feet of it, the strip nearest the house. Old cottages here carry deep overhanging eaves, and what comes off that roof in a downpour lands well out from the wall, on whatever you have just paved.
So the calls tend to be about the same corner of the garden. A line of slabs beside the wall that has sunk and now holds water. Jointing washed out where the drip has hammered it year after year. And green, slippery paving on a strip that never gets the sun and never dries.
Fixing that is a levels and drainage job before it is a paving job. We come out, lift a slab, dig a trial hole, look at where the eaves actually throw water, and take levels off the building. Then you get one written itemised quote with the dig, the muck away, the sub base, the paving, the edges and the jointing on separate lines. The visit and the quote are free.
The work
Terraces, margins and the strip beside the wall
What comes out first. Old concrete, cracked flags on a sand bed, brick paviours gone soft, a raised bed or a stump and its roots. We excavate to firm formation rather than to a set depth, clear out made ground where we find it, and load the spoil straight into a grab lorry or a skip so the muck away leaves with us.
The sub base. A geotextile separator over soft ground, then MOT Type 1 brought up in compacted layers of about 100mm. Hardcore dumped in one lift and given one pass with a whacker is why so many patios are rocking by their third winter.
The margin at the wall. Under a deep eaves we would rather not run slabs hard up to the brickwork at all. A gravel border on a land drain takes the drip, keeps the splash off a soft old wall, and gives the paving somewhere to shed to. Where the door threshold sits low, an ACO channel across it and a run to a gully or a soakaway does the same job in less width.
Porcelain. Calibrated twenty millimetre porcelain is dense enough that a wet strip under an eaves stays a wet strip rather than becoming a green one. It goes on a full bed of mortar over a slurry primed back, never on dabs, because voids under a dense slab crack.
Stone. Sandstone is warm, easy to work and forgiving, but porous, so it darkens and greens where water lands repeatedly. Limestone is more even and marks with iron. Granite is the hardest and copes best with a permanently damp position. Travertine is not one for this village. Hand cut stone varies in thickness, so the bed levels it; calibrated stone is sawn to one depth.
Falls, levels and the damp course. Paving falls away from the building and finishes clear of the DPC, two courses below it where the garden allows, which is the point of Approved Document C. On a cottage with no damp course at all, the answer is a margin, a channel and a step down rather than paving up the wall. Water then goes to a gully, a soakaway or a permeable build so the runoff stays on your ground.
Edges and jointing. Edging bedded and haunched in concrete, a coping to any low retaining wall, a kerb line where paving meets lawn. Stone is hand pointed in a matched mortar or given a brush in compound worked into a full joint; porcelain takes a grout made for dense units. Short joints under a drip line wash out first.
Repairs. Re-bedding a rocking slab, rebuilding a sunken run, swapping cracked units, renewing failed jointing and cleaning down a slippery terrace.
How it runs
From your call to a written price
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.
Tolpuddle has its own conservation area and twenty seven listed entries, so what is visible from the street, a boundary wall opened up for access or a tree cut to clear a terrace are separate questions from the paving itself. Dorset Council keeps the record of both. A patio is not building control work; drainage joined into an existing system can be.
Cost
What decides the price of a patio
No rate per square metre, because the slabs are the part you choose and the smallest part of the price.
Getting to it. A thatched cottage on the main street with a side passage, a post war house with a full width gate, and a bungalow with an open drive are three different jobs before a slab is chosen. Everything comes in and goes out through the garden, often through a side gate or the house. A patio you can barrow to directly is a different job from one where every slab is carried. The work at height rules still apply to the dig and the machinery.
What is coming out before anything goes down. An old concrete slab, a raised bed, tree roots or made ground all have to be dug out and taken away, and that is priced by the load rather than by the metre. The dig is where a patio quote is won or lost.
Falls, levels and the damp course. A patio has to fall away from the house and finish at least two courses below the damp proof course, and getting that right often means steps, a retaining edge or a drainage channel. Laying a new patio up against a wall at the wrong level is the single most expensive mistake on this kind of job.
Comparing quotes? Ask how deep the dig goes and what sub base is specified, whether the slabs are laid on a full wet bed or on dabs, what the falls are and where the water goes, whether edgings and steps are included, and what the jointing compound is. Two quotes for the same job are usually two different jobs.
If it has become a hazard
A patio that has lifted, sunk or turned slippery
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 the slab that has dropped is the one by the back door, ring, because that is the one somebody catches a foot on in the dark. The phone is answered 24 hours for emergencies; scheduled work runs Monday to Friday, 8am to 6pm.
Worth knowing
Where the rain comes off the roof decides the edge
A cottage with a deep overhang throws water a long way out. Modern houses have a gutter close to the wall and a downpipe into a gully, so paving can run right up to the brickwork. Plenty of the older buildings in Tolpuddle do not work that way, and the slabs nearest the wall take a concentrated line of water every time it rains hard.
That does two things. It scours the jointing out of one row of joints while the rest of the patio looks fine, and it soaks the base under that row until it settles and the slabs start to rock. On a wall with no damp proof course it also drives splash back up the fabric, which is a damp problem rather than a paving one.
So we set the patio out from the drip line first and the door second. A stone margin on a land drain, or a channel where there is no room for one, takes the load. Where thatch is involved we keep the working platform and the machinery clear of the eaves, because a barrow load caught on an overhang costs more than the paving does. It is a small change to the design and it is the difference between a terrace that looks the same in ten years and one that needs lifting in three.
Who you are dealing with
A local firm you can check
We cover Tolpuddle, Affpuddle, Burleston, Puddletown and the villages along the Piddle valley, broadly DT2, under Dorset Council. You are dealing with Bournemouth Roofing & Building, the trading name of Bournemouth Roofing & Building Ltd, registered in England and Wales, company number 15471719, which you can look up in a minute. Thomas Hannen's business, and he is the one who comes out to price the job, not a salesman. A verified customer's 10 out of 10 on Checkatrade. The visit and the written quote are both free.
Questions
Tolpuddle questions we get asked
Why has only the row of slabs by the wall sunk?
Because that row takes the water off the roof. A concentrated drip washes the jointing out and softens the base under one line of paving while the rest stays dry and sound.
Should the patio come right up to the cottage wall?
Usually not on an old building. A gravel margin or a drainage channel between the paving and the wall takes the drip, keeps splash off soft brickwork and gives the falls somewhere to run to.
Our floor is lower than the garden. Can we still have a level terrace?
Yes, with a step down and a retaining edge holding the higher ground back. What we will not do is build the paving up the wall to make it flush, because that bridges the damp course.
Will a digger fit down the side of the cottage?
A micro digger goes through most standard side gates. Where the passage is too tight or the eaves too low we dig and barrow by hand, and that time is shown as its own line.
How soon can we use it after it is finished?
Walk on it the next day. Keep heavy furniture and pots off for two or three days while the bedding mortar and the jointing take up properly.
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Get the edge beside the house designed properly
Thomas comes out, looks at where the water lands and prices the dig, the base, the margin and the paving in writing. The visit and the quote are free.