Do i need to hire a compactor? - Methods of compacting a small patio.

[seanyboy]

I am replacing the very small patio at the front of my garden. It's 2.6 by 1.7 meters square and previously consisted of a few concrete flags laid on the soil (placed by the previous owner). Although this area isn't used much, I've decided to try and do a better job with it, and this site has been extremely helpful. You guys Rock!

As recommended, I plan on laying a 50mm base of 10:1 sharp sand / cement semi-wet mix.

My question is, do I really need to hire a plate compactor to compact this down, or are there any more manual methods? The site mentions trampling, but does this just involve walking about on the sand? If so, how long should I do it for? I know it's a stupid question, but I have no idea.

I'm also planning on using Marshalls Heritage paving. Marshalls recommend that this be layed on mortar. I know that this is a topic that has been discussed in the forums before, and general concensus appears to be that the 10:mix is OK for it, but has anyone actually layed this paving (or an equivalant) on the above mentioned mix, and has that paving been OK?

Thanks in advance.

[Tony McC]

You don't need a plate compactor and you hardly need to 'trample' the bedding because you;ll need it loose-ish so that the flags can be tapped down to level.

10:1 mix is a mortar and I've laid thousands of square metres of flags of all types on this mix and had very few problems. Heritage is no different to any other riven-effect wet-cast flagstone and will work fine with a 10:1 mix. I can't be arsed digging into my old records but as a conservative guess, I reckon I must have laid over 2,000 metres of Heritage when I was contracting, and my companies probably laid 3-5 times that quantity between 1988 and 2000, most of which would have gone onto a 10:1 or 8:1 mix.