I bought one of those random repeat forms that end up with a paver walkway of what appears to be random sized stones, but there is a repeat in it. You get your base prepared, lay the form on there, pour concrete in the holes, pat it down, and immediately remove the form. You have approx. 2 sf of pavers. You fill in between with sand, or let the grass grow in there.
Anyone ever use one of these? It is surely going to take a lot of 80# sacks to do this job. Suggestions/caveats appreciated.
Steve
If you plan to do 20 sq.ft. of pavers, you should be good to go. If you plan to do 200 feet, I would re-think the plan; actually, I'd buy the stone or pavers. And if you are doing pavers and buy them, I would opt for clay rather than concrete as eventually the color in the concrete will disappear unless it is "color through"; in either case, the aggregate in the concrete will eventually be exposed, looks like hell IMO, YMMV.
In either case, the base is all...good base, the results will last. Around here (central Florida), 3" of compacted base - crushed concrete is often used - is standard for light duty. You also need something to contain them laterally; various aluminum/steel/plastic landscape edging is often used but I like concrete better.
If you plan to do 20 sq.ft. of pavers, you should be good to go. If you plan to do 200 feet, I would re-think the plan; actually, I'd buy the stone or pavers. And if you are doing pavers and buy them, I would opt for clay rather than concrete as eventually the color in the concrete will disappear unless it is "color through"; in either case, the aggregate in the concrete will eventually be exposed, looks like hell IMO, YMMV.
In either case, the base is all...good base, the results will last. Around here (central Florida), 3" of compacted base - crushed concrete is often used - is standard for light duty. You also need something to contain them laterally; various aluminum/steel/plastic landscape edging is often used but I like concrete better.
My sister used the 'flagstone' ones for a sidewalk at her place. Her husband did the mixing and she did the filling/forming and whatever else it took.
I saw the results a couple years later & was impressed, actually. They are in the woods in NY with less than ideal subsoil and lots of frost that comes and goes several times a winter..
Between your hard caliche and winters that get cold and stay that way[if I remember your area right] - it should work fine for you.
I'm with DadiOH on the pavers though-- So much more forgiving and easier to change later. And probably cheaper if you're buying bagged concrete. [especially vs used pavers which are abundant on Craigslist]
Jim
If you don't mix the concrete correctly (ie - if you use too much water) then the minute you remove the form, the concrete will ooze together and the gap between stones will disappear.
Assuming this form is 3" high, then 2 sq ft x 3" is about .5 a cubic foot of concrete (without taking the gaps into account).
I haven't.
I've mixed an estimated 420 cubic feet (15.5 cubic yards) of concrete using a small 1.5 cf electric mixer over the past few years. I buy sand and stone right from the quary and load it into my pickup truck myself, so it costs me about $20 a ton for 1/2" crushed stone, and washed brick sand is twice that. Cement costs about $12 a bag (40 kg or 88 lbs).
If you buy sand and stone already pre-bagged as 30-lb bags, then it's going to cost significantly more to make concrete.
I also use pigments, super-plasticiser and air-entrainment agent, but I won't take that cost into account here.
Taking only the cost of sand, stone, and cement into account, I figure it costs me about $3.42 per cubic foot to make cement (equates to $92 a cubic yard).
So going by those numbers, it would cost roughly $3.50 to make enough concrete to do 2 of your forms (4 square feet).
You can make about 5.5 cubic feet of concrete with one 80 or 88 lb bag of cement using a standard mix formula, which would be enough to fill your form about 7 times.
Your average paver might be 6" x 6" and it would take 16 of them to cover 4 square feet, and they'd have to cost 22 cents each to be cost-equivalent to the concrete-in-form method.
The form method has a nice advantage in that your top surface will be nice and even and flat, something that can take a while to do when you're putzing with pavers. But you have to get the consistency exactly right if you want to remove the form right after you pour the concrete and not have the gaps get filled in right away. Even then, I would suggest you have the sand ready to pour into the gaps when you remove the form.
Correction - 11 times.
Reading the directions (WTF do they know?), it suggests one form per 80# bag, which sounds a little fishy, but I won't know until I am into it. I want to have stained concrete, so if I get a consistent setup going, I can just use the same amount of water, and the same number of spoons of colorant, and it should come up close.
The 80# bags are right at $4 per bag in my area, making it $2 per square foot. Pavers are $.59 and $.99 respectively for the 5.5" and 5.5 x 8". Doing fast math on that, that's $3.27 per sf for the biggies, and $2.80 for the smaller. Correct me if I am wrong.
Still not sure how to go.
Steve
I may, however, check out the craigslist paver thing, though, as I do like the look of them much more.
That would be if I used cement, sand, lime, sand, and aggregate. How many cu. ft. in one 80# sack of premix?
Steve
They're talking about a bag of pre-mixed concrete, which you just add water.
Concrete weighs about 145 lbs per cubic foot. An 80 lb bag of pre-mix would give you about 1/2 a cubic foot of concrete.
You haven't said how high your form is - I'm still assuming that it's 3" high, and it requires 1/2 a cubic foot of concrete to fill it. As the instructions say - one 80 lb bag of pre-mix would fill the form, so it must be close to 3" high (probably a little more, maybe 3.25").
How many pours do you intend on doing?
Do you have a mixer?
The concrete you're making with the pre-mix is costing you $7.25 per cubic foot. That's about double the price if you were to buy the sand and stone in bulk and mix it yourself. It all comes down to how many sf you need.
If you mean that the small ones are 5.5 x 5.5, then you need 4 of those per sf (and even then you won't exactly get a real square foot unless you have big gaps between them). If they cost 59 cents each and you need 8 of them to cover 2 sf, then that's $4.72 for the small ones.
You need 6.5 of the larger ones to cover 2 sf, so at 99 cents each that's $6.43.
My numbers are for 2 sf, yours are for 1 sf - and they seem off. Unless you're taking their exact size into account.
Using the pre-mixed stuff, it's almost the same price per sf as using the 5.5 pavers. If you factor in the cost of the pigment, you could easily double the cost of going the concrete way (pigment isin't cheap).
Again it comes down to how much of this you need or want to do.
You won't need lime. And you don't need to use sand twice. :)
The aggregate is just crushed stone. For something with small details like your paver form, I'd use 1/2" crushed stone - not the standard 3/4" size.
I mentioned this in my previous post, but just to answer it here, and assuming 5 lbs of water, then your 80 lb bag will give you about .58 cubic feet of concrete.
"Home Guy" wrote
800-1,000 sf.Steve
"Home Guy" wrote
Form is 1.75" high. Need to do 800-1,000 sf.
Steve
Steve B wrote the following:
According to
You claim that your form has a surface area of 2 square feet, and it has a height of 1.75 inches.
That would give it a total volume of 0.29 cubic feet.
That much concrete would weigh 42 lbs. A single 80 lb bag of pre-mix could easily fill 2 forms.
What is the length and width of your form?
Is it 2 feet by 1 foot? Or is it 2 x 2 feet?
If your form really is only 2 square feet in area, then you will be using it 400 times to give you 800 sq feet.
It will take you a minumum of 10 minutes to mix one 80 lb bag of premix, and another say 10 minutes to pour it, smooth it, remove the form and set it into a new position and pour the remainder of the mix, smooth it, remove the form and set it into the next position. That's 20 minutes, and you'll do that 200 times. If you get good at it, let's say 15 minutes. Times 200 is 3,000 minutes or 50 hours. If you can do that for one 6-hour stretch during a single day, then it will take you 8 or 9 days.
But getting back to your form. 1.75 inches isin't very thick, but I suppose it's thick enough to support people walking on it.
Then personally I think you're nuts. [in a nice way- and I've been there, too. But still--]
Cost alone, you're certainly going to be able to make a better deal on Craigslist with a little patience. I've seen patios free for the removal. Too far away for me to haul in my 1/2 ton trailer-- but tempting.
.50-$1. is the usual asking price & if you show up with a truck a few greenbacks those things are negotiable.
The only way I'd be tempted to make my own pavers for a job that size would be if it was a pattern/color that I just couldn't live without. And then I'd probably make them first and lay them like pavers- not as a pour-a-foot-or-two at a time job.
I think those things are good for a small job where you mix a batch by hand each day for a couple weeks. For your job you'll want 3-4 forms, mix in the mixer-- and then clean it out 2-3 times a day, trying to keep the mix uniform through all kinds of weather.
Jim
Around here (central Florida) concrete pavers from Home Depot run in the range of $1.40 ("Holland") to $2.20 per sq.ft. If you can buy by pallets, you can get them for a lot less from manufacturers/distributers.
I had a 1750 sq.ft. courtyard done a year ago, cost me a total of $5.00 per sq.ft...$2.50 sq.ft for clay brick, the same for all other materials and labor. Clay brick is a bit more than concrete but well worth the cost IMO for the reasons previously stated.
GOOD GRIEF, man, you will kill yourself!
We all have different pain thresholds but I wouldn't even consider prepping/mixing/pouring that much for pavers. Even prepping and using store bought pavers would give me pause. If I were you I'd check around and see how much a contractor would charge. WARNING: their prices will be all over the map but if you are persistent you can find someone to do the job for a decent price.
In my area, most all paver installs are being done by Brazilians. Some enterprising Brazilian gets a bunch of workers from his country and hires them out as a team to the contractors. The contractor adds some to his cost, the Brazilian honcho takes a cut and pays the actual workers what's left. They work hard, know what they are doing and do a good job.
This part we're in agreement on.
We disagree on this- unless Steve has a deadline. To me the beauty of pavers is that once the prep work is done you can go out and set
5-6 while you're waiting for the missus to fix her hair. When she comes out, you take off your gloves and get in the car. Or you can set a couple 100 when it is nice and cool one day. I have a 15' octagon that I've been playing with most of the summer. I can't ever work more than an hour & sometimes I can only do that once a week.I did 4-500 sq' 5-6 years ago at the same pace. It still looks as good as the day I finished. [maybe better]
Jim
He should probably also look into stamped concrete, assuming that a concrete truck can get close enough and drainage of the area isin't an issue.
I also don't know if we're talking about a large rectangular area (40 x
20, 30 x 30, etc) or is this a 2-foot wide path that's 450 feet long?He would need 8.3 yards of concrete to do 900 sq feet, 3" deep. Or 5.5 yards if it was 2" deep.
The smaller concrete mixing trucks come in a variety of sizes, from about 3 to 6 cubic yards, and the large trucks can carry 10 cubic yards. Most will want to do an order of 5 cy minimum.
The cost per delivered yard has basically doubled over the past 5 years, to about $120 to $150 per cy.
So assuming 7 cubic yards and $140 per yard delivered, he'd be looking at about $1000 for concrete. Coloring, form work and stamping would be extra. Even if that cost another $1000, then he's looking at $2000 for
900 sq feet, or about $2.25 per sq ft.
I use 2/3 cu.ft. per bag to size forms and come very close.
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