The Brew Cabin

Dear Sir,

I have wrote before regrding the tightness of radius, my next questions are.....
1) I have to pave 40m2 and would like a very distinguished looking flag. I like the look of the stonemarket riven in their brochure, but you said that it is a very uneven surface, which is not very good for tables (I had not thought of that), can you recommend a few more types that may possibly fit my criteria of being
aestetically pleasing (ie looks like old quarry stone)
being colour fast
comes in various sizes to do a randon pattern.
In the £15-20 /m2 price bracket.

I hope I am not asking for the world in my criteria....

My 2nd question is....
Why did my builders when laying flags around my house leave a 4inch gap between the flags and the walls filled in with decorative gravel.
Is this for regulation purposes or could they not be fagged to cut the flags to size?

My 3rd question is.....
I hope to lay them on 50-60mm of compressed grit sand
Why do i need to add 10% cement to this, is it to bind the sand togethor, because would the coarseness of the sand not do that itself.

4th and final question (for now)
How bad would it look if lay all the patio in one go, and then filled in the gaps with either dry cement/sand or actual mortar.

5th question (I lied)
Would it be possible to make a web page up with numerous flag types displayed, the price /m2, and your general opinion on the product

Please be gentle with your ansers


Cheers

Chris

Sir?? You talkin' to me?? Only the Bobbies call me "Sir"! ;)

15-20 quid per square metre... mmm...you're not going to get much for that, and you certainly won't get the Stonemarket 'top of the range' stuff. There's some very nice imported Indian Sandstone doing the rounds for that sort of money. Whereabouts are you? I might be able to tell you where to go and look.

Q2 - Because they're eejits, possibly. This is the notorious 'Splash Strip' that is supposed to reduce the risk of damp but is a bit of a con, as it just reduces the amount of expensive paving that has to be laid. There is no reg. that insists on a Splash Strip and I have never, ever heard a single convincing argument for its use on a residential patio.

Q3 - 50-60mm of sand is too much. 50mm maximum, otherwise it can lead to problems with settlement.

The cement binds the sand garins and makes them resistant to wgroundwater movement and ants. If you have a really good coarse sand, such as the stuff we get from the Pennine quarries around Horwich, that can generate sufficient interlock to more or less bind itself, but many of the river and marine grit sands need a peppering with cement to encourage them to stay put.

Q4 - using a dry sand/cement mix for the jointing on a flagged patio with 8-12mmm joints is a waste of time and materials. It won't last more than a couple of years, if that! If you must use dry mix, then it must be swept into a joint that's been freshly buttered with mortar, so that it can properly bond to the mortar and to the flag. Best of all is a proper mortared joint.

Q5 - it would be, as soon as I've found a way of getting 30 hours into the day! Ackshirley, this is another of those pages in my 'development' folder, along with a similar page for Block Pavers and Clay Pavers, but the choice is so-o-o-o HUGE that the Block Paving version, which goes under the codename "Wotblok", has been in development for the last 2 years!

As I said in answer to the Random Pattern Generator request, the site has become so time-consuming that I'm struggling to keep up with just answering emails and responding to messages in the Brew Cabin. I try to put up new material every week, but it's getting to be so busy, that I hardly recognise Mrs Taz and The Reichskinder have started referring to me as 'The Cripple wot lives upstairs" ;)

I am based in North Manchester, a place called Bury.
It has been suggested to goto Travis Perkins.

<Choke!!> Travis Bloody Perkins?!?!?!? When it used to be John Kay's in Bury, it was a decent yard with a good range of stock, but since the global domination of TP and Jewsons, you need to find a specialist stockist of paving materials or a small independednt BM, or all you'll be offered is the run-of-the-mill over-priced stuff from a very small number of large, national manufacturers.

There's a list of fairly local suppliers of stone paving on the Stone Links page. Stone Essentials in Rossendale is the nearest I can think of to you - tel: 01706 211120 and tell them I referred you. :)

If you ever get down as far south as Stockport, Ernest Axons at Cheadle Heath has a good selection of paving materials, too - 0161 428 0314.