Paving Sealing in Ottery St Mary

The Moore & Franks approach in Ottery St Mary

Ottery sits on the Otter valley floor where mist lingers over the meadows below St Mary's well into the morning, and that standing damp is no friend to a block-paved drive. Clean a driveway near The Square or out on the newer estates toward West Hill and Tip Hill, and the moss is back in the joints and the weeds lifting through before long — the trees lining the river and lanes to Cadhay shade and shed onto it too. Sealing after a proper clean breaks the cycle: we wait for the surface to dry, bind the jointing sand so it stops washing out, deepen the colour and slow the regrowth. Family-run, insured to £5m, twenty-five years behind us, and straight about whether your paving needs it. Free quote.

Regrowth is the whole reason sealing makes sense in Ottery. The heavy tree canopy along the river and the lanes out of town keeps drives shaded and drops leaf litter into open joints, where it rots and hands moss and weed seed a foothold within weeks. Binding the kiln-dried sand takes that loose bed away, and on the most shaded drives we can add an optional biocide top-coat once the seal has cured, so the green holds off far longer between cleans.

Ottery's paving splits between the newer and the older parts of town. The block drives on the estates climbing out of the valley are usually builder-laid and only lightly sanded, so their joints empty fast and want re-sanding before any seal; the flagged and stone paths around the older streets are more forgiving but suit a discreet matt finish. We match the finish and the prep to what is actually down rather than treating a modern drive and an old path the same.

The valley damp makes the drying stage the important one. Low ground beside a river sheds its moisture slowly, and paving here stays wet long after the surface looks ready, so we will not seal until the blocks have genuinely dried through, even if that means leaving a clear day or two after the wash. Trapped moisture is the usual reason a seal clouds or peels, and in a spot as damp as Ottery that is a trap worth avoiding by simply waiting for the surface.

Our Ottery St Mary customers are typically within 20 minutes of our Exeter base. We cover the wider EX11, EX10, EX5 postcode area and the surrounding villages (St Mary's Church and the Tumbling Weir, The Square and Silver Street, Cadhay Manor, West Hill, Tipton St John, Newton Poppleford).