Indian Sandstone for patios

[Mike Saunders]

This seems good value for money but maybe tricky to lay

Any feedback on using this would be welcome

Thanks

Mike

[Chris Bacon]

Trot along to Mr. Cormaic's.

[Christian McArdle]

I was thinking of using cheap Indian slate for the same purpose (probably from stonell). I don't suppose you have a link for the cheap sandstone you're looking at for me to compare?

Christian.

[Phil L]

Never actually used this stuff but I agree, it does look good for the price...my only concern is the thickness - 25mm? IME the thinner the surface to be laid, the more work there is in getting it right - with thick flags/slabs you can belt 'em all day with a flagging mallet to get them down, with these they will just shatter, meaning that they have to be laid on wet mortar and e-a-s-e-d into place with no force at all, this makes things difficult in the long run and is much more laborious and time consuming. In an earlier post you mentioned that you have a concrete base? - this may be a perfect substrate to lay these things on given that they ave to be laid this way. BP has to go on hardcore with sand on top of that to allow for drainage.

[Mike Dodd]

Layed some 20 square metres of it last year, looks well. No problems at all. Broke one piece out of my own stupidity (hitting hard with a long length of 4x4 wood to "tamp" it down on a rather too hard cement bed, but other than that it was a simple (although laborious) job. Paid around £20 sq/m, I think. Hmmm, need to finish off the path leading to it - that's this years job.

For hire: One wife, who knocked up 2 ton of concrete in the process.

[Andy]

I laid a short path and patio using Stonell Indian slate, the cheap stuff, Autumn Gold or whatever it's called. It does call for laying on a solid bed, so there was some difficulty with that as I was inexperienced. I would advise people to lay on soft sand mortar with plasticiser added to allow for adjustment.

If you use too much mortar and try and bash it down all the sand grains lock together at a certain point and there is no adjustment left so you have to gauge the quantity of mortar very critically. If I did it again I would 'chop' the mortar into ridges more to allow for easier adjustment, I don't believe a few air spaces left underneath a slab are a big deal, and it makes adjustment so much easier than trying to squeeze every last air pocket out from under a slab.

The end result was quite pleasing ( 30 x 30 cm slates laid diamond pattern with rectangular border strips ). Other advice I have is to start with the thickest slates first, as they vary, to measure each slate for squareness as some are parallelograms, and to shuffle the packs to get a random assortment of slate colours.

Not directly related to the OP's question about sandstone but not entirely irrelevant I think.

Andy.

[Mike Saunders]

There are quite a few on ebay, a couple of which are close to us (Derbyshire/West yorkshire) Around #18 - #22 per m2 + Del.

Mike

[Davy]

One other thing; it has a pretty uneven surface. Some will have depressions which will puddle rain water for days making the patio unpleasant to use. Suggest putting these at the edge rather than where you intend to sit. Also make sure the grouting allows rainwater to run away.

cheers, Davy

[The Natural Philosopher]

I laid about 50 sq meters of it a year or two ago..

Mainly over a crushed limestone base..but actually bare earth ain't bad...I used a wet sharp sand and WHITE cement mix. about 5:1. Very wet so that it would puddle back down as I tamped the stones down onto thick beds of it. I pointed up with the same mix, and then carefully scraped, sponged and finally brick-acided the spare mortar off the stones.

Doing a computer style picture of the mosaic worked rather well.

Looks great now,except in one area where water collects it looks like Myra Hindley has been visiting. My geologist relative things it's manganese oxide leaching out of the stones. Looks lik blood to nme tho ;=)

[The Natural Philosopher]

I paid about 24 a square for it.

Scotsdales do it I think, though I didn't get mine from there.

[The Natural Philosopher]

They don't shatter that easily but thickness varies from 15 mm in places to over 30mm on the riven slabs (hand riven too by the appearance) ..that's why I ended up with a wet mix that would flow, rather than a dry sand/cement mix. I simply couldn't thump them hard enough to GET them to settles, and they were sufficiently uneven to need very variable beds...

[The Natural Philosopher]

I say go wet and sloppy. JUST dry enough to not slump under own weight..most of mine were laid in what looked like a vile porridge. The fact that I had a limestone base underneath meant surplus water drained pretty fast..this helped stop slumping as the mixture dried out' long before it 'set'

[The Natural Philosopher]

Davy wrote: Also

Not necessary. Simply arrange a slope to an edge..1:500 is all it takes. a cm over ten meters.

Puddles are a pain, so any deep rives will have to be thought out.