Posted: Tue Oct 10, 2006 9:46 am
Hi,
I’m doing some fairly radical work around my place, including a new drive, patios, and a few curved steps, plus a curvy wall thrown in for good measure. Just about everything’s sorted, but I do have a couple of things to resolve.
I want to use sandstone for the paving bits, and for the wall capping. I’ve been let down on the supply of stone though, through misinformation, I’ll not bother you with the details. The sort of thing we’re looking for, is a light brown to buff or grey sandstone, and something that when riven doesn’t come out too rough; don’t want everybody tripping up all the time and calling the injury lawyers. I now think the capping and step treads would be better sawn, to have consistency of thickness, if riven stuff isn’t reliable, I’ve been working on 40mm as being the one I’d be using. It doesn’t need to be squared stuff for this, because I have to cut the curves for the various radii of steps etc. Can anybody recommend a stone and a good supplier; right stuff at right price sort of place, in the north of England, or Derby upwards anyway?
My other thing to resolve concerns the drive. It’s an irregular shape an area of roughly 76sq m, on a bit of a slope something like 15 degrees. It’s been dug out, down to hard ground, and had a good 100mm of really good hardcore compacted in. The next stage is 100mm of reinforced concrete, but it’s how I tackle this I’m now trying to decide. I’m doing all the work myself, and laying 76sq m in one go, I suppose, if properly prepared, isn’t impossible, but a challenge never the less, even with ready-mix, assuming it comes when you want it. The thing about our drive though, in common with thousands of others, is that most of the services run up it, i.e. gas, electric, and sewer, fortunately they have all been run in the same trench. If I go over the whole lot with a single block, what happens if access is ever needed to the services? So I wondered about laying the concrete in panels, including one about 750mm wide up the line of the services. This would leave me with an area I could split into three, making four separate panels in all. To help anchor the panels on the slope, I would put trenches across the slope at the top, middle, and bottom of each panel and leave a 10mm expansion joint between the panels. There’s stone to go on top off all this though, and I’m wondering, with four different slabs of concrete, if they do move about because of the slope or expansion / contraction etc, what’s going to happen to the stone? I’m wondering, should I be thinking of working some expansion joints into the stone paving too perhaps, or will this begin to make it look messy, there again, do I have any choice? Is there a flexible bed option, can I bed the stone on the concrete with sand, as with block paving, or are the tolerances too uneven i.e. stone thickness not uniform enough, or the slabs not flat enough, or joints not tight enough, or all of these.
It’s a bit of a head scratcher, and I was wondering if anyone had been there done that, and got any after thoughts and suggestions to offer?
Cheers!
Busy b
???
I’m doing some fairly radical work around my place, including a new drive, patios, and a few curved steps, plus a curvy wall thrown in for good measure. Just about everything’s sorted, but I do have a couple of things to resolve.
I want to use sandstone for the paving bits, and for the wall capping. I’ve been let down on the supply of stone though, through misinformation, I’ll not bother you with the details. The sort of thing we’re looking for, is a light brown to buff or grey sandstone, and something that when riven doesn’t come out too rough; don’t want everybody tripping up all the time and calling the injury lawyers. I now think the capping and step treads would be better sawn, to have consistency of thickness, if riven stuff isn’t reliable, I’ve been working on 40mm as being the one I’d be using. It doesn’t need to be squared stuff for this, because I have to cut the curves for the various radii of steps etc. Can anybody recommend a stone and a good supplier; right stuff at right price sort of place, in the north of England, or Derby upwards anyway?
My other thing to resolve concerns the drive. It’s an irregular shape an area of roughly 76sq m, on a bit of a slope something like 15 degrees. It’s been dug out, down to hard ground, and had a good 100mm of really good hardcore compacted in. The next stage is 100mm of reinforced concrete, but it’s how I tackle this I’m now trying to decide. I’m doing all the work myself, and laying 76sq m in one go, I suppose, if properly prepared, isn’t impossible, but a challenge never the less, even with ready-mix, assuming it comes when you want it. The thing about our drive though, in common with thousands of others, is that most of the services run up it, i.e. gas, electric, and sewer, fortunately they have all been run in the same trench. If I go over the whole lot with a single block, what happens if access is ever needed to the services? So I wondered about laying the concrete in panels, including one about 750mm wide up the line of the services. This would leave me with an area I could split into three, making four separate panels in all. To help anchor the panels on the slope, I would put trenches across the slope at the top, middle, and bottom of each panel and leave a 10mm expansion joint between the panels. There’s stone to go on top off all this though, and I’m wondering, with four different slabs of concrete, if they do move about because of the slope or expansion / contraction etc, what’s going to happen to the stone? I’m wondering, should I be thinking of working some expansion joints into the stone paving too perhaps, or will this begin to make it look messy, there again, do I have any choice? Is there a flexible bed option, can I bed the stone on the concrete with sand, as with block paving, or are the tolerances too uneven i.e. stone thickness not uniform enough, or the slabs not flat enough, or joints not tight enough, or all of these.
It’s a bit of a head scratcher, and I was wondering if anyone had been there done that, and got any after thoughts and suggestions to offer?
Cheers!
Busy b
???
im up in 4 hours to get myself to work heh