Builders in Ardingly

Ardingly is properly rural in a way the towns down the road are not. Plots are larger, houses sit further apart, and a good deal of the work here happens alongside the house rather than attached to it.

Building out rather than on

When there is room in the garden, an outbuilding is often the better answer than an extension. A detached garage, workshop, garden room or annexe leaves the existing house alone, and it does not eat the daylight at the back of it.

Siting decides these more than size does. Detached outbuildings frequently fall under permitted development, but the rules turn on how close to the boundary the building sits and whether it falls forward of the principal elevation, and there are limits on height and on how much of the garden can be covered. Worth establishing before you design around it. We build garages, workshops and annexes as well as extensions.

Access and logistics

The lanes around Ardingly are narrow, and on a fair few properties the drive is long, soft or both. That is not a problem, but it needs to be known before the price is agreed rather than after. On tight accesses we plan around smaller deliveries, stage the muck-away and think about where a skip can actually stand. A builder who does not raise access at survey has not thought about it.

Local stone

Ardingly gives its name to a sandstone that runs through this part of the Weald, and sandstone shows up in older walls, outbuildings and boundary walls across the village. It is repaired the same way as any other historic masonry, in lime rather than cement, so the mortar stays softer than the stone and takes the weathering instead of the face of the stone doing it. See refurbishment and restoration.

Planning

Mid Sussex District Council. Parts of the village are within a conservation area, which restricts permitted development rights, and there are listed buildings in and around the village centre. Worth checking your specific address before assuming anything is automatic.