Help with patio

[JoCH]

I had a new patio laid about 3 years ago. The slabs are the type which are uneven, and are laid with gaps between them (10 - 40 mm) and silver sand in between. It is quite a large patio, and each spring we spend hours scraping out the old sand (mixed with dirt and weeds etc) , washing the slabs with patio cleaner and replace with new sand - which looks lovely for a while! But the weeds etc soon start to grow again and looks unsightly. Also when we sweep the patio, dirt etc gets caught it between the slabs where the silver sand is.

I would like to ask advice on what is the best action to take to keep the patio looking good, but without having to spend a lot of time maintaining it.

Thanks

[Tony McC]

The best thing to do would be to stop wasting time filling the joints with sand! What's the point in raking out summat that has failed, only to refill the joint with the very same thing???

Point the joints with mortar, or look into using a decent quality polymeric jointing compound.