The Brew Cabin

Posted: **Wed Apr 01, 2009 12:33 pm**

Fantastic site.
I've got a small area of hard standing for a car - about 6m x 4m. I have a small (almost non-existent!) budget. The area is bounded on 3 sides by old buildings, one of which is a sandstone barn. I want something that is in keeping. The hardstanding area at present is a mixture of mud, very old natural flags, old cobbles and odds and ends of different style bricks some of which were made locally and so to utilize them would be nice! Some of the flags are 3 or 4 inches thick, others more like 1Â½ inches!

So I have this assortment of bits I'd like to use, all of different sizes and thicknesses, but not enough to cover the whole area!

I could:
1. Get rid of the lot and use driveline 50's ( not as cheap as i'd like the project to be and doesn't have the character i'd like)
2. Use the existing stuff as a border and fill in with driveline 50's
3. Use the existing stuff as a border and fill in with concrete
4. Anything anyone else can think of.

Somehow I want to avoid the look of 1970's crazy paving. Most of the flags I have are pretty square, so hopefully i can avoid the crazed look.

Any thoughts on the above options, any alternatives, or any practicalities of how to do it (eg dealing with the different thickness of flags/bricks) would be appreciated. The area I've described as "Border" would be on three sides and so would not directly need to take the weight of the car

Posted: **Wed Apr 01, 2009 10:51 pm**

drainage needs to be a consideration,if the area is surrounded on 3 sides,the lowest budget would be to utilise the flags (sound like yorkstone) and fill the gaps with gravel
lay flags as per main site
LLL

Posted: **Fri Apr 03, 2009 9:39 am**

I'm with LLL - lay the flags as far as they go on a concrete bed and then infill the edges/border with the odds and sods.

Posted: **Sun Apr 05, 2009 9:31 am**

Thanks.
There's a bit of a slope and ideally i want surface water as much as possible to drain right away, so gravel is not my ideal.

Havie done a bit of digging out and looked at the raw materials I have and think I've probably got less usable stuff than i thought So I'm thinking now that I'll do flags around the edge and infill with readymix concrete.

If I do that I'm concerned that if the ready mix goes over the flags (they're mainly very old with smoothish rounded well worn edges) that I'll get the readymix all over the flags in the tamping down/smoothing off the concrete process. Any thoughts?
Also, having laid the flags I'll need to do the infill between the flags. Due to their age the gaps will be quite uneven - maybe up to an inch. Because of this Should I use wet or dry mix?

Finally any thoughts on the fact that the colour of this maybe different to the colour of the ready mix? All the sand at the builders merchants round (rural Cumbria) here is very red in colour.

many thanks

The Brew Cabin

Very vague question about car hardstanding!