Patios, paths & hard landscaping in Macclesfield

The same crew, the same groundworks and the same rules, applied round the back. A patio is a driveway that does not have to carry a car, which changes the depths and the bedding but changes nothing about drainage, falls, edge restraint or how much of the job happens before anything is laid.

Falls and thresholds are what separate a good patio from one that puddles or, worse, one that puts water against the house. A paved area should fall away from the building at roughly 1:80, and the finished surface should sit at least 150mm below the damp proof course — where a door threshold makes that impossible, a linear channel or a slot drain across the doorway is the proper answer rather than simply building up to the door and hoping.

Porcelain has taken over the patio market for good reasons and it is worth understanding what it needs. It is dense, near non-porous, frost-resistant and does not stain — but that same density means it has to be laid on a full mortar bed with a slurry primer on the back of every slab, because nothing else will bond to it. Porcelain laid on five dabs of mortar sounds hollow, cracks under load and comes loose in frost.

The extras are increasingly what people ask about at the same time as the drive: a level, properly drained base for an EV charge point and its cable run, a path round the side that does not turn into a bog in November, or a hardstanding and small car park for a business unit. It is all the same trade and it is all quoted the same way — one contractor, one price, nothing hidden below ground.