Driveway and patio questions, answered

There is no honest answer to that without seeing the ground, and any firm that gives you a figure over the phone is guessing. What the price turns on is what has to come out, how deep we have to dig before we hit something solid, where the water is going to go, and which surface you pick. Two drives the same size on the same street can be a long way apart on all four. So we come out, look at it properly, measure up and put a full written quotation together covering what is being taken out, what is going down and what it costs. The visit and the advice are free whether or not you use us, there is no deposit, and the quotation stands for 30 days so you can put it next to anyone else's line by line.

A normal domestic drive is a week to a few weeks on site, and you get the run of days in the written quotation so you can plan the car around it. Most of that time goes on the part you never see afterwards: digging out to formation, carting the spoil away, building the sub-base up in compacted layers and setting the edgings on concrete. The surface itself is the quick bit. A small patio is often a couple of days. What we will not do is start yours, disappear onto another job and come back the following week; once we start, we stay on it until it is finished.

Neither, it depends on the drive. Tarmac earns its place on long drives, shared entrances and big open frontages, where a large area of block would be slow to lay and dear to cover, and it gives you one continuous surface with no joints to work loose. Blocks win on a shorter drive you look straight at from the pavement, anywhere that might need lifting and relaying later, and where you want colour and a pattern. Plenty of jobs end up as both, with tarmac over the bulk of the area and a block or sett border at the entrance. We will tell you which we would put down on your frontage and why.

Usually not, as long as the surface deals with its own water. In England a new hard surface between the front of the house and the road is permitted development if it is porous, or if the rain running off it goes onto a lawn, a border or a soakaway inside your own boundary. Lay more than five square metres in something solid that drains straight onto the pavement and you are into a planning application instead. That is why the drainage is settled at the quote stage rather than left to the last day. If your house is listed or you are in a conservation area the position is different, so we check that before pricing rather than after.

If a car is going to cross the footway to get onto the drive, you need a vehicle crossing and it is the council's to approve. Wakefield Council covers Wakefield, Ossett, Horbury, Normanton, Pontefract and Castleford. You apply to them, they decide whether the frontage is deep enough and what the crossing has to be built to, and they set the fee. Those rules and fees change, so ring the council for the current position rather than taking a figure off any contractor's website. We build the drive up to your boundary and work in with whatever the council wants on the footway.

What decides that is underneath the blocks, not the blocks. A drive dug out to a proper depth, laid on a sub-base compacted in layers, edged and haunched so nothing can creep sideways, and given somewhere for the water to go, stays flat and stays put. One laid straight onto whatever was already there will start to dip and rut within a couple of winters however much the blocks cost. The other thing in a block drive's favour is that it comes apart: if a service is dug up later, the same blocks go back down and there is no patch scarred across the surface.

Groundwork carries on through the winter. Digging out, sub-base and edgings are not weather jobs in the way people imagine. What is fussy is anything with mortar in it, because frost gets into fresh mortar and ruins the pointing, and tarmac, which has to go down and be rolled while it is still hot. On a hard frost or a downpour we would rather move a day than push on and end up coming back to it. If a date moves we ring you and tell you.

Not a lot. Brush it, and wash it down once or twice a year without going mad. A pressure washer held close and on full will strip the sand out of the joints and take the face off some slabs, so keep it moving and keep it back. On block paving, top the jointing sand up when the joints start to look low, because that sand is what locks the blocks against each other. And keep gullies and channels clear of leaves. Most standing water on a drive is a blocked drain rather than a bad fall.

They are almost never growing up through the drive from below. Seed lands on top, dust and grit settle into the joints over a couple of years, and that is the bed they germinate in. So the answer is housekeeping rather than a rebuild. Keep the joints topped up and brushed out, pull them early while the roots are still shallow, and treat the odd stubborn one. A block drive with its kiln dried sand kept up, and slabs with the joints properly filled and pointed, are both much less inviting places for a seed to land.

It stays accessible, which is the one thing nobody can bend. Where a cover sits in the middle of a patio or a drive, the usual answer is a recessed tray: the same slabs or blocks are cut and set into the lid so the cover reads as part of the pattern rather than a metal square in the middle of it, and it still lifts when the drains need looking at. Covers, gullies and inspection chambers get worked into the setting out before anything is laid, not solved on the day.

No. No deposit is required, and nothing is asked for up front to hold a start date. The quotation is free as well, so getting a price from us costs you nothing and commits you to nothing.

You ring or email, we arrange a time and come out to look at the ground. We measure up and talk through what will suit the frontage and what will suit the budget, and the advice is free whether or not you use us. The price then comes back as a full written quotation covering what is being taken out, what is going down and what it costs, so you can put it next to anyone else's and compare it properly. Free, no obligation.

Yes. A path down the side of the house, a couple of steps, a small run of walling, a patio corner that has dropped and needs lifting and relaying are all normal work for us. So is safe access into and around the house for elderly people or anyone with a disability, which is worth asking about at the survey because it changes levels and thresholds rather than being bolted on afterwards. The quote is free whatever the size of the job.