Relaying old imperial edwardian blue bricks - Relaying old imperial edwardian blue bri

[anguslugsdin]

Hi There,

A ggogle serach found your website, what a find. Hope someone can help. I must confess I am a novice at laying paths, bricks or anything similar. A few months ago I had the builders in and they knocked down the front wall outside my house which was fairly nasty and have replaced it with a nice reclaimed brick wall. In the process they broke up some of the concrete on the path leading up to the front door to reveal some gorgeous old blue bricks. I decided last weekend to try and remove the overlying concrete to the rest of the front walled garden to ascertain if the blue bricks continued underneath. Unfortunately they do not and using a concrete breaker hired from HSS I dug up quite a bit of the old concrete.

I have removed the old blue bricks which are 10"x5"x2" and in good condition and added to those with some more that were hiding in the back garden. I would like to relay these as a path to the front door which has a waist level wall on one side and then with an edging to the other side and then gravel the rest of the area. At the moment the material is back to the hardcore base. My plan was to mark out the area for the path and then add a layer a few inches deep of building sand. Relay the bricks, add a layer of plastic sheeting to the area that will be covered with gravel and then add the gravel.

If the bricks are laid on the sand do I need to add any mortar in between the joints to keep them together and if so is there a particular mix of mortar I can use so that it too looks pretty old?

Am I going about this the correct way?

[Tony McC]

Laying on building sand? Putting gravel over a plastic sheet? You've not bothered reading the main website, have you?

[anguslugsdin]

Ok my mistake I have now read the main site and from what I can gather I shoudl do the following;

1. Make sure the base material is okay
2. Mark out the area that the path will ne in which is approax 2.5m x 1m. On the left hand side there is a wall so that is fine as one edging. Using concrete create end edge, I will use some of the blue bricks turned on their side.
3. Fill the path up to 50mm deep in Grit sand and skim it to create aflat surface. Lay the old brick sin my chosen pattern
4. Fill the 3mm gaps with silica sand brushin into the surface.
5. Use a wacker plate to tap down the bricks into the grit sand.
6. Top up the silica sand in the cracks
7. Fill the other walle din area direct with my chosen grazvel, probabaly cotswald gravel, no need for a plastic layer as long as the sub surface later is okay.

My only question is, if the subsurface layer which is broekn up hardcore is not even, what shoudl I use to fill the gaps and even it out. Can I use grit sand or do I need something else? :O

[Tony McC]

Use a Type 1 or 40mm crusher run material.