Laying Heavy Paving Slabs

[Steve]

I am redesigning the back garden of a house I moved in to a few years ago and as part of the new design I need to move a good sized patio. To keep things simple I plan to re-use the existing 60 slabs. The problem is that these slabs are much heavier than the normal purpose made garden paving slabs I have used in the past.

I have laid a couple of patios over the past 20 years, using slabs up to

450mm square and maybe 30mm thick and I remember it as being hard work, particularly when it came to positioning and levelling each slab. It was fine if the slab could be tapped level, first time, but if it needed relifting and relaying it was really hard on my back.

The slabs I am now about to use are 600mm square and 50mm thick and therefore weigh about 3 times what the others did. In the past I laid a full bed of sand over the whole area, then 5 blobs of mortar under each slab. I'm thinking that this time I should lay, level and mechanically compact a full sand bed and just lay the slabs straight on to that.

Does anybody have any experience of laying slabs like these? Any advice or tips to help me survive this job would be very welcome.

TIA

Steve

[Rick]

These are like the slabs the council use on the pavements. They are very hard work. When I did mine I set myself targets, of like 2 slabs a day. So each morning I did my 2 slabs, then did some easier stuff (like crocadile wrestling) for the rest of the day.

Whatever you lay them on, if they ain't right they have to come back up again..........

Rick

[doozer]

Funny you should ask because I laid exactly this type of slab last weekend and it was blinking hard work. I would suggest you get yourself a friend into help (there was two of us) because lifting and re-laying the slabs to get them level on a dry mix is really hard work.

We laid the slabs on a dry mix using a couple of spades a spirit level and a big rubber mallet.

First use a piece of wood to get the dry mix about level (I'm assuming you have laid hardcore if you need / want it) and then lay the slab on it as gently as you can. We found the best way to lower the slab was to place a foot against one side of the slab to act as a pivot and then lower the slab. It digs in along the side your foot is on but that's easy to fix in a minute. Mind your fingers though it's really easy to trap a finger.

Aim to get the slab a couple of millimetres high on the side opposite your foot. If that's the case hit it with the mallet until it's level. This compacts the sand and seats the slab.

Check the slab with a spirit level. If the foot side is a little low (probably will be) _gently_ lift the edge with the tip of a spade and use the mallet to compact dry mix under the slab (this is best done with two people).

One thing to watch out for is getting material trapped between the slabs (only a problem if you are laying them flush) which forces them apart. To fix that just run a finger along the edge of the already laid slabs so that you create a _small_ (5 to 10 mm deep) trench by the slab. The small amount of spare material falls in that gap and allows the tiles to be push firmly together.

Final points: Don't try compacting the dry mix - it's a complete dead loss. You just damage it while you lay the slabs and sets solid anyway The two slabbed areas I built following the above method hold 5500 litre water tanks and they've not moved a mm. If I had to do it again I would probably try blobs of cement.

[doozer]

[Christian McArdle]

Christian.

[Lobster]

As others have said, damned hard work. But I'd also add that you should consider the real risk of permanantly damaging yourself - if you burst a spinal disc or something, it will simply never be the same again. Hernias are very easily acquired, too. What I'm trying to say is, if you can possibly afford to outsource some d-i-y to a professional (who will be well used to the work), then this is the job to choose!

David

[nightjar]

...

Hire a slab lifter. It gives you control over placing them and minimises the risk of injuring yourself.

Colin Bignell

[doozer]

I'm not sure I would go as far as to say that you should get someone in to do it for you. It is very hard work but it's an easy job to work steadily at for a long time. It really does pay to get a friend round to help - in fact I would say if you can't get a friend to help you probably should pay someone.

[The Natural Philosopher]

Yup.

I laid my sandstone slabs - and teh big uns were about 55kg each - on a wet bed of about 7:1 sharp sand and (white in my case) cement, after roughly levelling with hardcore MOT type I and gravel.

By getting the consitency right, and its rather critical - and using about 1-2" of the 'mortar' I could tap them down with a mallet, and the excess oozed off.

I washed each slab carefull with a wet sponge wrung out in fresh water every wipe, carefully, leaving only a slight cement film to cleam off with brick acid when dry.

Joints were 'grouted' with the same muck at the same time.

Dot and dab is IMHO a naff way to do it as its very easy to get rock and collapse. But if a quick'n'dirty is what you want, got for it.

[Tim Lamb]

In message , doozer writes

If you rake the dry mix into ridges you can get a little bit of club hammer and block of wood adjustment.

regards

[mungoh]

It's of no help at all, but my father always maintains that there is an inverse to the phrase "laying slabs" because you spend more time lifting the damn things than laying them...

Mungo :-)

P.S. Can I claim first the phrase "cash ebb" which is the reality instead of "cash flow"?

[Steve]

Thanks to everybody for some really helpful suggestions, ideas and warnings.

Steve

[Chris Bacon]

About what?

[Christian McArdle]

Laying heavy paving slabs. I suspect your newsreader isn't displaying threads right...

Christian.

[Chris Bacon]

Aha! I was displaying them in time order, my usual display mode - sorted by threads, I can see "Thanks" in context. I'm using "Thunderbird", which seems generally OK except that sometines if I click a title with the mouse moving slightly the whole list scrolls to the top or bottom!

[bigcat]

Chris Bacon:

Your middle name isnt Paul is it? Chris P Bacon?

NT

[Chris Bacon]

Oh, please, not again.

[bigcat]

poor man :( I figured at laest someone else might find it funny.

NT

[Rod]

[e-mail] wrote in news:1114031031.945707.20740 @o13g2000cwo.googlegroups.com:

Do you remember the presenter on the ITV news (southern?) - Chris Peacock?

One of my favourite names was Stella Balls - don't know why, just made me smile.

[The Natural Philosopher]

I never fail to grin at 'gardeners question time' whose assistant priducer is always 'jo-king'.