Posted: Fri Apr 03, 2009 10:11 am
I am delighted to have found this site!
We live in an appartment in the centre of Rome and have a small plot - 600 sq m of weeds with a tin hut on it in - in the country an hour's drive to the North.
Recently, we bought an ancient caravanette that we plan to keep on our plot. The van's gross weight is 2500kg.
The plot is reached by a narrow dirt track about 200m from the sealed road. Nothing wider than 2m can use the track.
I want to pave over an area, previously used for growing tomatoes on which to park the van and turn it round.
I reckon I'll need to pave an area 8m x 8m. I plan to use the locally abundant tuff stone blocks for the surface, with wide gaps (circa 5cm) to allow grass and herbs to grow between them.
The soil is a strange mixture of clay and sand, which sets like concrete when it is dry but drains well. It is the exposed bed of a lake whose shore is now 500m downhill in a volcanic crater. It is also infested with perennial weeds such as ground elder whose roots are more than 30cm deep and which no amount of digging has been able to eradicate. I have been regularly parking my car on an adjacent piece of ground for years without any problems.
It almost never rains between May and September and the ground becomes parched. The rest of the year has a fairly reqular cycle of rain or snow and fine weather. There are frequent very heavy downpours when surface water can be a problem. Frost is rare.
My basic plan is to mark out and level the area to be paved without removing the topsoil, compact the soil with a vibrating plate, spread and compact 2 layers of sub-base using demolition waste, cover this with an appropriate thickness of sand and then lay the tuff blocks, and fill the gaps with a mixture of soil and sand.
I am quite happy about the paved surface being higher than the surrounding ground.
My questions:
Is it sufficient to compact the topsoil and use this as a sub grade?
Should I lay a membrane between the sub-base and the sand?
Should I lay drainage tubes in the soil before spreading the sub grade? These would be run to an existing ditch.
Demolition rubble - this is a readily available and free material in Rome (contractors usually have to pay to get rid of it), resulting from appartment rennovations. It consists of broken lightweight clay bricks, plaster, mortar and hard floor materials such as marble, broken ceramic tiles and cement mortar sub-floor rubble. Would this be OK for a sub base?
Getting material to the site is also going to be a problem which I think can only be resolved with a wheelbarrow and a lot of hard work.
We live in an appartment in the centre of Rome and have a small plot - 600 sq m of weeds with a tin hut on it in - in the country an hour's drive to the North.
Recently, we bought an ancient caravanette that we plan to keep on our plot. The van's gross weight is 2500kg.
The plot is reached by a narrow dirt track about 200m from the sealed road. Nothing wider than 2m can use the track.
I want to pave over an area, previously used for growing tomatoes on which to park the van and turn it round.
I reckon I'll need to pave an area 8m x 8m. I plan to use the locally abundant tuff stone blocks for the surface, with wide gaps (circa 5cm) to allow grass and herbs to grow between them.
The soil is a strange mixture of clay and sand, which sets like concrete when it is dry but drains well. It is the exposed bed of a lake whose shore is now 500m downhill in a volcanic crater. It is also infested with perennial weeds such as ground elder whose roots are more than 30cm deep and which no amount of digging has been able to eradicate. I have been regularly parking my car on an adjacent piece of ground for years without any problems.
It almost never rains between May and September and the ground becomes parched. The rest of the year has a fairly reqular cycle of rain or snow and fine weather. There are frequent very heavy downpours when surface water can be a problem. Frost is rare.
My basic plan is to mark out and level the area to be paved without removing the topsoil, compact the soil with a vibrating plate, spread and compact 2 layers of sub-base using demolition waste, cover this with an appropriate thickness of sand and then lay the tuff blocks, and fill the gaps with a mixture of soil and sand.
I am quite happy about the paved surface being higher than the surrounding ground.
My questions:
Is it sufficient to compact the topsoil and use this as a sub grade?
Should I lay a membrane between the sub-base and the sand?
Should I lay drainage tubes in the soil before spreading the sub grade? These would be run to an existing ditch.
Demolition rubble - this is a readily available and free material in Rome (contractors usually have to pay to get rid of it), resulting from appartment rennovations. It consists of broken lightweight clay bricks, plaster, mortar and hard floor materials such as marble, broken ceramic tiles and cement mortar sub-floor rubble. Would this be OK for a sub base?
Getting material to the site is also going to be a problem which I think can only be resolved with a wheelbarrow and a lot of hard work.