Putting indian sandstone above gound - Bit of help....actually lots of help!

[pappap]

Hello all, first posting and would like some help.

I have spent ages reading through this brilliant website and still cannot find the what I require. I may be that it is simple not done.

The water table in my garden is quite high (when it persisting it down for some time the water collects ontop of my grass until it soaks away) it doesn't cover all the garden just small patches by about an 1/2 inch.

Therefore I wanted to raise my garden level by three ish iches(including the height of the fossil mint sandstone I have bought).

The main questions are:

1) If i'm raising my garden height, do i need to dig out first and put a sub base down? Its quite solid very clay soil, or put the sub base straight onto the soil and wacker it in.

2) As im going above ground and the base is quite solid can i put 20mm of sand over the ground layer and wacker it in to make it level and bed straight onto that using 40mm of semi dry mix (as the natural water content should solidify it, I was intending on doing it this way).

3) If i intend on doing it the above way is sharp sand going to be ok as a sub base?

It is only going to be a garden patio so no taffic, heavy footfall, as only me, the missus and the dog! The area I'm doing is about 20m2

I hope the above maskes sense, Ive never layed patio before (as you may have guessed) and want to get it right. Any help would be appreciated.

Thanks in advance.

[lutonlagerlout]

welcome to the brew cabin pap
reading your post you havent really read the website at all have you?
1 all top soil must be removed (this is the brown/black stuff containing roots etc) this is not negotiable

2 NO, NO, NO, 20 mm sand is not a subbase,100mm of type1 is

3 ^^

lastly read this until your eyes bleed
then read it some more

cheers LLL