Patio & Driveway Installation in Greater Manchester
Patios and driveways built from the ground up: proper excavation, a compacted sub-base and falls that carry water away from your house, in porcelain, Indian stone, flags or block paving.
Patio & Driveway Installation
Anyone can make flags look right for one summer. What tells you who laid them is the first winter, when the ground moves. We dig out to the correct depth, lay and compact an MOT Type 1 sub-base in layers, and set every flag or block on a full mortar bed, so the surface you walk and park on stays flat for years, not months.
On the surface itself, we work with porcelain, Indian stone paving, traditional flagging and block paving. Porcelain is hard-wearing and barely stains; Indian sandstone gives natural colour variation at a sensible price; a block paving driveway gives you strength and pattern where you park. As local patio installers, we’ll talk you through what fits your garden, your budget and how much upkeep you’re happy with, and we’ll tell you straight if a cheaper option would do the same job.
Drainage matters more than most people realise. Every patio we lay falls away from the house and finishes below the damp proof course, so rainwater runs into a border, a lawn or a drainage channel and never against your brickwork. On driveways, we design the surface so water soaks away or drains within your own boundary, which usually keeps a new front drive within permitted development, so no planning application is needed.
- Porcelain, Indian stone, flagging and block paving
- Full dig-out and compacted MOT Type 1 sub-base
- Correct falls so water runs away from the house
- Driveways designed to drain within your boundary
- Old patios and drives broken out and carted away
- Sunken or rocking flags relaid on fresh full beds
How It Works
Free site visit
We come out, measure up, check levels, drainage and access, and go through material samples with you.
Written quote
An itemised price covering excavation, sub-base, materials, labour and waste removal. No day-rate creep, no extras sprung at the end.
The build
Dig-out, sub-base compacted in layers, then the patio laying: flags or blocks set to falls on full mortar beds and jointed properly.
Tidy handover
Waste cleared, the new surface washed down, and a walk-round with you before we call it finished.
Patios & Driveways FAQs
It depends on the size, the material and what we find when we dig. Porcelain costs more than Indian stone, with block paving somewhere between, but the excavation and sub-base are a fair chunk of the price whatever you lay on top. We price per job rather than a blanket rate per square metre, because a small fiddly patio costs more per metre to lay than a big open one, so you get an exact written figure after a free site visit before anything starts.
Usually not. Under permitted development rules you can pave a front garden without permission as long as the surface is permeable, or rainwater drains to a lawn or border within your own boundary. Permission only comes into it when more than five square metres of impermeable paving drains straight onto the road, and we design driveways so it doesn’t.
Porcelain is dense, colour-consistent and barely stains, so a porcelain patio stays looking new with almost no upkeep, but it costs more and needs a skilled lay. Indian stone is natural, so every flag varies, and it weathers into the garden nicely at a lower price, though it benefits from an occasional clean and seal. Neither is wrong; it comes down to the look you want and the budget.
A typical patio runs three to five days: dig-out and sub-base first, then the patio laying, then jointing once the beds have firmed up. Driveways are similar, sometimes a day or two longer for the extra depth of dig. Wet weather can stretch things slightly because mortar and jointing compounds need time to cure.
Nine times out of ten it was laid on sand or dabs of mortar with no proper sub-base, so the ground underneath has settled. If it’s a few flags, we can lift and relay them on fresh full beds, or repoint where the joints have just washed out. If the base has failed across the whole area, relaying the lot on a compacted sub-base is the honest fix. Patching a bad base just moves the problem.
Patios & Driveways Near You
We provide patios & driveways across Leigh and the surrounding towns. Pick your area for local details.