Having successfully laid a small Indian stone patio (flags laid straight onto a 6:1 dry mix) in our garden around 8 years ago, I've been tasked with laying another similar one elsewhere in the garden. This one's bigger and more visible so needs to go well - no pressure there then. Having come across the website I liked it so much I bought the book a couple of weeks ago and have read it pretty much cover to cover. All this information has probably lead to me be overthinking the task which in the scheme of things is fairly standard and ought to be simple. Despite searching the forum, I've ended up with a few questions...
1) We've had ants mining the sand out from another patio area and my wife is concerned that a 10:1 mix won't be strong enough. So to see how strong it is, I mixed a barrow of it as a dry mix and am pleasantly surprised how strong it is but wife is not convinced. Is 10:1 'ant proof'? I'm sure it is as if not you'd not recommend it but I'd hate to make an easy mistake.
2) The patio has one free edge so once the bedding (planning for semi dry or if hot, a moist mix) had cured, I was going to use an SBR slurry to stick 1 course of stones down along that edge. I'd even got as far as thinking I could paint the slurry onto the cured bed rather than the underside of the flag in an effort to reduce the chance of splashing the surounding stones. Then I saw a post on the Cabin where a variation of this method had failed and Mr C used the phrase 'Waste. Of. Time.'. Would my proposed method work? If not, for my education can someone advise why (curiosity - I'm not challanging the reply)?
3) Assuming I'll need to change the plan to paint the SBR as the slabs are being laid, given the short working life of the SBR slurry, either I mix up enough to do 1 (or at most 2 slabs) or, lay a dozen or so slabs, get them 100% levelled and then go back and paint the underside of the flag (or the bed ). To me, it seems easier to lay a dozen and then go back and bond them else I'll spend half my time washing the SBR brush & bucket so the slurry doesn't set on the brush and turn it into a solid block. Or am I missing something?
I'm amazed at how much info there is on the website (and the book has even more) so can't quite work out why having read all that, I've still got questions - but I have. I guess it's something to do with, when you don't have a good understanding of a subject, it's easy to worry about things that don't need worrying about.
1 - 10:1 is more than ant-proof. It's mole, fox, rabbit, worm and, if we had them in Britain and Ireland, Gopher proof.
2 - NO: lay the "stones" (I'm assuming you means setts) as you would the flags - directly onto a mortar bed after priming the underside of the sett with a suitable bond bridge product.
3 - Prime ONE unit at a time, immediately before laying. If you use a proprietary primer and mix it wet (like a pea soup) even at this time of year you shoulkd get 30-45 mins working time. If necessary, just mix up a litre or so at a time. The great advantage of a proprietary pimer is you have consistency, whether you mix a cupful or a bagful.
4 - I've spent 22 years compiling this site and I still have *so* much more I want to add. Wile it is a reasonably comprehensive site, there is always something new or unexpected that comes up, and that's part of what I love about it. I tend to focus on new content that is "in demand", so, for example, over the past couple of months there has been a lot of questions about leachate staining oozing out from paving that is 12 months or so old....so I create a page to deal with that, which means that the ongoing work on the use of Intermediate Restraining Courses gets put on hold yet again.
The biggest problem for me is finding the time to create the content. I have to earn a living so much of my day focuses on that work but I spend more-or-less every spare moment editing, updating, and adding to the site and still I have a whiteboard crammed with "To Do..." items.....which is exactly how I like it to be!
2) Re my 'Stones' along a free edge. Sorry my wording was poor. It's all flagstones - no setts. I was going to 'SBR' all the flagstones that run along the free edge. My design is that they are all at least 600mm deep i.e. no '300s' along the edge.
2a) No problem, I'll prime the underside of the flagstones.
Out of curiosity/ 'for my education', why would priming the bed fail?
I can only assume the slurry doesn't get a decent key on to the underside of the flag.
). To me, it seems easier to lay a dozen and then go back and bond them else I'll spend half my time washing the SBR brush & bucket so the slurry doesn't set on the brush and turn it into a solid block. Or am I missing something?