General Chat

Thank you everyone that has been a great help :-)

Patios, soil etc etc should be 2 bricks (approx. 6") below any damp course. The black line you mention will be your damp course. All houses with cavity walls will have air bricks irrespective of if they have wooden floors. The air brick lets air into the cavity twixt the two walls which helps deal with damp etc. My house is an ex council house semi built 1954. It has solid concrete floors and 2 air bricks per each of the 3 sides

Yes, just don't have anything touching above the dampcourse. Ours is like Chris's with a gravel border between the house wall and the patio. It stops splash like folk have said. Also a patio has to slope to drain the rainwater and ours has to slope towards the house so with the gravel it can soak away. Also, if you want hanging baskets on the wall it is better for them to drip onto gravel rather than on your patio where they can leave stains!

Years ago when dampcourses were rows of blue bricks, some houses had more rows than others which may be where you have heard mention of bricks. Old bricks were imperial sizes, now they are metric and smaller I think. Nowadays they seem to use rolls of bitumen stuff or plastic for the damp course.

We are in a heavy clay area and some 6" away from house bricks the patio slabs stop. The 6" strip is filled in with gravel so that rain water etc will filter through and hopefully prevent subsidence. Again this prevents splashing up of heavy rain.

Don't know about the "3 bricks rule". But have always considered 150mm (6 inches to some) about right.
Reason is that rain - especially heavy rain - splashes/splatters up the wall.
Also. Unless the property has a solid slab floor, there should be some air bricks which must not be covered as they provide ventilation to the underside of timber floors.

That would be the damp course........keep everything below it and you will be fine says OH. :-D

Not having us on, just there is a black line which we assumed was the patio must not go above, damp course maybe, couldn't think of any other reason why it is there.

I have never heard of a legal requirement for the minimum height of a patio! How big is a brick? Do they have a legal and standard size?
Is somebody having you on?

If you google "building a patio" there are several sites to look at, but none of them mention any legal/planning requirements.

This one is pretty detailed.

http://www.brettpaving.co.uk/home-owners/installation/how-to-lay-a-patio/

We think we will have to break up the old patio because we are not sure on the hight limit. I E does it still have to be at least 3 brick height to be legal, at the moment it is only showing one and a half brick height.