Patios in Westbourne

Garden flats in converted villas. Many of Westbourne's older houses are now split into flats, and the ground floor flat often has the garden, or part of it. These spaces are rarely large, and they sit hard against a tall old wall that throws shade.

Porcelain with a textured face is a good choice in Westbourne: it does not soak up water, it cleans easily, and it stays less slippery than a smooth sandstone in a garden that never quite dries. Before you order anything, check your lease. Laying a patio is often an alteration the freeholder has to agree to in writing.

Shared gardens behind blocks. Communal terraces at Westbourne's purpose-built flats tend to be old concrete slabs on sand, laid decades ago. They sink, rock and lift at the corners. We lift the lot, dig out the old base and any made ground, lay a type 1 MOT sub base compacted in layers, and relay on a full bed. Where the terrace meets the building, a channel drain takes the water to a gully rather than against the wall.

Courtyards and small back gardens. Where the only access is through the house or a narrow side gate, every slab and every bag of spoil is carried by hand or barrow. We plan the layout, any steps and the level changes first, and use calibrated porcelain or sawn sandstone and limestone that lay flat and true in a tight space.

Natural stone, and when to keep it. Some older Westbourne gardens still have York stone or old sandstone flags. If they are sound, lifting, cleaning and relaying them on a new base keeps the character and costs less than new stone. We will tell you honestly if they are too cracked to reuse.

Repairs and jointing. A single lifted or cracked slab, a sunk step, joints that have washed out and filled with weeds, or algae and efflorescence staining. Loose slabs are lifted and rebedded, and the joints are raked out and refilled with a slurry or brush in jointing compound that suits the stone.

One person to ring 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.

Most patios at a house need no planning permission if they are near ground level and the surface is permeable or drains onto the garden. A block of flats has no permitted development rights, so a new shared terrace can need planning, and a raised patio or deck is a separate question again. Inside the Westbourne conservation area it is worth checking before you start; 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 it is a shared garden at a block, cone off the loose slab and tell the managing agent the same day, so nobody else trips on it. 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

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

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