Garden path in carpet stones - Planning our diy project

[AlistairJ]

We are planning a building new garden path because we don't like the old one and we want to move it.

We have decided on Bradstone "Carpet Stones" in rustic red as this looks like it will give a rustic appearance (by this I think the gf means, not like an office car park). Also, the path is not going to be straight, in fact it will meander around a silver birch tree so I will be cutting diagonals off the carpet mats to make up the turns.

A few questions:

Q1) The old path was done in Cotswold gravel over a 5cm compacted sharp sand base. Can I use this material as part of the new base, in place of or in addition to fresh hardcore?

The plan is to use an 80cm wide (thats two strips of carpet stones) path on a 100cm wide hardcore sub-base, using 7cm of bedding mortar (1:3:6 semi-dry mix). I was going to use the pointing mortar (1:3 mix) to haunch the sides of the path.

I do not want to use any kind of visible edging to the path as this will spoil the effect a little bit, and also be difficult to plan and construct (because of the curving nature of the path).

Q2) Will the edge stones be held in place strongly enough using this method?

[AlistairJ]

Here are the proposed carpet stones, the straight rustic red 'uns.

Bradstone carpet stones

[AlistairJ]

Ok I've just read about Romex and we'll definitely use that for the pointing!

So the bedding and haunching will all be done using 1:3:6 mix, semi-dry.

[Tony McC]

I do wish Bradstone would answer their own technical queries!

For a non-vehicular pathway, lay the CarpetStones on 30-50mm of semi-dry 10:1 mix of grit sand with cement. Sub-base is optional: see FAQ on main website. Romex or similar for jointing is fine.

For a government-friendly path, you can lay the Carpet Stones onto a bed of 2-6mm grit or coarse grit sand, and joint with 6mm grit.

As for edging, that will be determined by the construction of the main paving. If you use sand/cement bed, then no edging required; if you go for permeable, then soil nails would be the logical answer.

[AlistairJ]

Hi Tony

thanks and thanks again for your very informative web site.

Is 10:1 sharp sand/cement mix going to be better than the 6:3:1 10mm gravel/sharp sand/cement mix you recommend in your mortars page?