Laying a 66m2 porcelain patio

[dobbslc]

You need to 'acclimatize' the stone to the local conditions

what did u do the joints with mortar or one of the easy joint type compounds , ?

I used jointing this compound,

Sika FastFix All Weather Jointing Paving Compound Deep Grey - 14kg | Wickes.co.uk

Sika FastFix All Weather Jointing Paving Compound Deep Grey - 14kg

www.wickes.co.uk

Funny old stuff that looks oily as you spread it about and made me worry it would stain the stone but it does work well.
I would say to push it down with a pointing tool as it shrinks a bit.

 

[RaceDiagnostics]

Glad I'm not doing it myself, I can barely lift these 600 by 900 slabs. The builders were due here today but have delayed by a week.

 

[RichardM]

Glad I'm not doing it myself, I can barely lift these 600 by 900 slabs. The builders were due here today but have delayed by a week.

View attachment 395732

Just let your wife know where they want to go and you'll be fine!

 

[brightspark]

Glad I'm not doing it myself, I can barely lift these 600 by 900 slabs. The builders were due here today but have delayed by a week.

View attachment 395732

i lifted a 3x4 foot 3inch paving slab up a ladder on to the chimney stack top on my own 40 years ago could hardly lift 25 kg now at 68 yrs old

 

[mtt.tr]

Porcelain slabs should be laid with the proper slurry paste. I'm sure silka make it

Whats the sub base made of clay, shale, soil.

I'd allow 100mm for a subbase using type 1 get it well whackered
Geotextile under it as that prevents the type 1 settling into the soil rather important detain.

 

[DAPPH]

Probably better off doing it yourself if you can. At least that way it'll be done when you want it and to the standard you want it doing too.

That's why it took me three years to bust up a 50 x 3 foot wide 9 inch thick concrete path along the bungalow wall & next doors , remove the garden cut & fill crap back put there 30 years ago when the place was built .

Did it so I could lay new sealed drains and put in ducted cables out to the office . 35 ton of 40 mm washed black limestone went in to the back fill as well as 15 tones of pea grit to bed the waste pipe in at the right angle of slope . New 80 mm thick paths were cast over the route of the pipe and cables

None of the old plastic and salt glazed pipework had be cleaned off and champhered , none of the joints had seals in them , they built the inspection chamber / access out of ancient reclaimed bricks ( circa 1860's ) & cut a bend with a discutters to make the open gulley un flaunched in the chamber so flurospar trickled in over the years and blocked off much or the the pipe work right to the main street sewer 35 or so yards .

 

[DAPPH]

One thing that kills me is shoveling but when we had the plasterer/screeders in they were using a long pole handle pointy spade/shovel thing, it made moving the loose stuff a doddle as you weren't bending down, I keep meaning to get one!

It's likely it was a quarry shovel .. a god send when shovelling stone , sand and brick bats ,

 

[RaceDiagnostics]

Porcelain slabs should be laid with the proper slurry paste. I'm sure silka make it

Whats the sub base made of clay, shale, soil.

I'd allow 100mm for a subbase using type 1 get it well whackered
Geotextile under it as that prevents the type 1 settling into the soil rather important detain.

The sub base is sand. Dug down 3 feet and all I found was sand.

The final decision was to go with limestone slabs.

 

[northwest]

My path and patio are a disaster. When I ended up in hospital back in 2019 my Mrs thought it would be a good idea to get a "proper" bloke in to lay the slabs. I could Frking choke the T*AT. It is positively dangerous now and I have since discovered that the "hardcore" he used was the original patio. I am going to have to fix it.

 

[DAPPH]

Same happened to me a good friend of several years got his landscaping contractor son to do my gardens for me .... £24k later it looked good . He'd agree to clean the soil to a depth of 500 mm as i wantred gardens and lawns done by myself in the next two years , and do the patio properly as requested .

We'd been on long time planned 3 weeks holiday abroad so didn't see what had taken place .

I started to dig the new lawn areas & veg beds by hand to a depth of 400 mm ( double digging ), adding nine tons of spent mushroom compost and cattle manure to the trenches as I wanted to give the lawns & veg beds a decent start . By the time I'd finished the 21 sq meter back lawn & the veg bed area I'd pulled out a windrow of rubble & rubbish 17 feet long by 3 foot high by five feet across the base . He was docked £800 for that . Front lawn about 1/3 of that size produced a mini skip of all manner of rubbish they had hidden there .

Both of them have now died , at the seven year point the 40 sq mtr patio started show sign of heave & the mortared joints dropped down making it a nightmare to consider using , it's coming out this year .

The sods only used 100 mm of all in one mixed ballast crap to make the base when I 'd asked for 300 mm of rammed 20 to 40 mm unwashed black limestone and 100 mm of 10 mm crushed white limestone watered in and plated solid , with the patio slabs being set on a 40 mm lime based mortar mix . Basically he dropped down a big central cow pat of brickies mortar for each slab & put theh slab on top . Our neighbour said he used a gert big rubber hammer to bash them level Doing the patio mortar joints he'd poured a dry lean mortar mix on the slabs , raked & brushed it in then sprayed it with water and ran a pointing iron over the damp top mortar to make it look as though it had been done correctly . .

 

[Agrismith]

The sods only used 100 mm of all in one mixed ballast crap to make the base when I 'd asked for 300 mm of rammed 20 to 40 mm unwashed black limestone and 100 mm of 10 mm crushed white limestone watered in and plated solid , with the patio slabs being set on a 40 mm lime based mortar mix . Basically he dropped down a big central cow pat of brickies mortar for each slab & put theh slab on top . Our neighbour said he used a gert big rubber hammer to bash them level Doing the patio mortar joints he'd poured a dry lean mortar mix on the slabs , raked & brushed it in then sprayed it with water and ran a pointing iron over the damp top mortar to make it look as though it had been done correctly . .

So 440mm of makeup ?? 100mm of type one on a geotextile is plenty of material for a patio.
I've dug up main roads with 150mm of subbase

 

[DAPPH]

It's a live silt type top soil with rubble here that was river dredgings & demolition site rubbish & used to bring up the sloping hillside plots to some where near a gently slope every time it rains hard a few hour later a two foot deep hole will fill with ground water . Next door down the hill has a lovely close to the surface spring running through her garden nearly all year round .
Where the patio now is I put a 2 ton digger in to just over the top of the tracks as I was trenching out for 4 runs of 100 mm perforated land drain It really is wet and not much has successfully improved things not even a 10 tonner load of bark & green wood chip as part trench infill under around and over the land drain .

 

[Agrismith]

It's a live silt type top soil with rubble here that was river dredgings & demolition site rubbish & used to bring up the sloping hillside plots to some where near a gently slope every time it rains hard a few hour later a two foot deep hole will fill with ground water . Next door down the hill has a lovely close to the surface spring running through her garden nearly all year round .
Where the patio now is I put a 2 ton digger in to just over the top of the tracks as I was trenching out for 4 runs of 100 mm perforated land drain It really is wet and not much has successfully improved things not even a 10 tonner load of bark & green wood chip as part trench infill under around and over the land drain .

I wouldn't expect bark and green woodchip to help much.
It breaks down and will block land drainage relatively quickly.
There are plenty of modern products to help with these problems. High quality geotextile is a must underneath. This stops the aggregate mixing with the mud and allowing it to move. Another good product is geo grid. It is a plastic mesh that is laid down within the aggregate allowing the aggregate to bind through the holes but not separate horizontally. These two products alone replace a substantial amount of aggregate.
Other options are concrete, incorporated lime or asphalt blinding.

 

[DAPPH]

The Romans used faggot bundles and brash to make long life drainage that is still evidenced even today .
Local to me at the time the Fenland drainage board also used it in draining water gently from silt land into pumped away streams / drains .

Once the oxygen is depleted from the fibers it acts like porous deep peat and takes hundreds & hundreds of years to disappear .

 

[Agrismith]

The Romans used faggot bundles and brash to make long life drainage that is still evidenced even today .
Local to me at the time the Fenland drainage board also used it in draining water gently from silt land into pumped away streams / drains .

Once the oxygen is depleted from the fibers it acts like porous deep peat and takes hundreds & hundreds of years to disappear .

Faggot bundles are intact. Not gone through a chipper creating fines and damaging the structure allowing it to break down easier.
The bundles will also have far bigger gaps in them than chippings. So will take longer to block.

 

[RaceDiagnostics]

Hard landscaping nearly done.

 

[addjunkie]

Thats looks really good! Job well done.

 

[RaceDiagnostics]

Normal service resumes.....

 

[Robotstar5]

Normal service resumes.....

View attachment 398712

Is that your labourer?, while you sit there with a cold one taking pics of the progress

 

[reb78]

Is that your labourer?, while you sit there with a cold one taking pics of the progress

He is playing with his Winkelschleifer while he watches her work.