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Posted: Sat Nov 17, 2012 7:20 pm
by CJGUNNER
Hi all new to the forum looks a good place for some good info.i have 50 new paving molds and some cladding molds and would like to know if anyone can give my any pointers on creating good paving slabs. like coloring techniques / mix to use / any info would be good.
thanks for your time
CJGUNNER
Posted: Sat Nov 17, 2012 7:52 pm
by local patios and driveway
If you are thinking of doing it for a living bear in mind real stone is getting cheaper all the time... Hard competition
Posted: Sat Nov 17, 2012 8:04 pm
by CJGUNNER
Hi thanks for the reply no not as a business. just to make some paving for family and friends
Posted: Sat Nov 17, 2012 8:25 pm
by sussex
Hi CJ sorry but i,ve never seen a home made slab that comes close to being worth laying,they tend to chip or brake & loose colour with in a few months.its better to buy the real deal & keep your friends as friends not people ringing up asking why the slabs you made them(and they spent money on laying) have changed colour. Other people much more knowledgeable than me may know more.!!
Posted: Sat Nov 17, 2012 8:36 pm
by CJGUNNER
Could you tell me where would be the best place to buy the real deal paving thanks for your time
Posted: Sat Nov 17, 2012 8:58 pm
by sussex
I dont know where you live,but any decent builders merchant or landscape supplies will have a range of quality slabs or natural stone.if you look on this site there are some seriously good firms show caseing there work & stock.You will see the differance !!
Posted: Sun Nov 18, 2012 10:04 am
by Bob_A
There was someone oh here who made his own, can anyone remember their name?
Posted: Sun Nov 18, 2012 11:37 am
by Bob_A
Found him Leeco but he hasn't been on here lately
http://ext.pavingexpert.com/cgi-bin....d8d7025
Posted: Sun Nov 18, 2012 11:47 am
by Tony McC
Billy used to or still does manufacture.
I regularly get asked about recommending a concrete recipe for making paving. Occasionally it's someone such as the OP who has acquired the moulds from eBay and assumed they can save money by knocking out their own stuff, which never, ever turns out to be true. Economies of scale alone mean that you can't make good paving in your back garden for less than it is made in a dedicated plant. However, over the last couple or three years, it's been 'overseas' enquirers who are either setting up in their own country or looking to import into Britain.
I have to tell them all the same thing: there is no guaranteed-to-work concrete recipe. All of the successful manufacturers have spent a small fortune in developing a recipe that works for them, with their moulds and other kit, using their aggregates, with their preferred cements, their local water and all to suit their chosen market. There is no way they will give away this knowledge, especially not to a potential competitor.
Finding the recipe that works for you is a matter of trial and error, and it's no exaggeration to say that you can easily churn out 50 batches of flags or blocks or whatever before you find the recipe that works. Making fence posts and base panels is a bit easier as there is no colouring and they aren't subjected to trafficking, which is why so many small manufacturers stick with fencing and don't venture into paving.
A few years back, there was a rogueish type on eBay flogging crappy moulds and an A5 sheet of 'instructions' on how to make your own paving at a fraction of the cost allegedly. I had quite a lot of correspondence about that scam, and one woman in particular became quite stroppy when I explained all of the above, with her insisting that I was part of a conspiracy with the big manufacturers to deter people from having a go themselves. The last I heard, she'd bought a bulk bag of building sand (WRONG!), a bulk bag of Cotswold Chippings (WRONG!) and a half-pallet of cement. No plasticisers, no colour, no mould oil....no frigging hope of it working!
I assumed that her sudden silence following a fortnight of almost hourly emails indicated that she finally got the message. 
Posted: Sun Nov 18, 2012 7:38 pm
by gonchy
my dad done something similar to this about 25years ago with copping stones,pillers and large roped planters i know the mix to slabs would be different but he mananged to get the mix right in the end even done a large job in windlesham with them as a show house but there was no market for them at the time so never took off he has even still got all the moulds he made himself too plus the house in windlesham still has them too this day 
Posted: Tue Nov 20, 2012 12:07 pm
by Tony McC
In the70s, it was screen block walling. You could buy moulds for screen blocks in Woolies (TruFact!) and every wannabe builder-gardener was churning out up to two-dozen blocks a week in their back yard, soon to be assembled into what could only be described as a "wall with character".
Rarely did any two blocks have the same colour or texture due to the vagaries of mixing concrete in a 2-gallon bucket (litres hadn't been invented back then), and even more rare was a block with actual 90° corners. Many had bulging sides due to the moulds deforming when filled with the mix, and on completion the whole thing usually resembled something dreamed up by Dali on one of his bad nights.
On my travels, I sometimes see surviving relics of these constructions, defying all laws of nature, and I really ought to photo-document them before they finall succumb to weathering and/or gravity. They are a thing of genuine amazement and awe!
Posted: Tue Nov 20, 2012 6:18 pm
by Bob_A
Dali on a bad night. LOL
Posted: Tue Nov 20, 2012 7:44 pm
by rab1
I`ve seen a few concrete precast mixing control rooms and its more man with computer, than man with a shovel. they had sensors in the silos/pits to monitor the moisture content of the aggregates.
Posted: Wed Nov 21, 2012 8:58 am
by Tony McC
They do indeed have computer controls on modern plant, but I know of at least one national paving manufacturer who is still using the "one scoop of sand and two scoops of gravel" method of concrete preparation, and many of the fence post/panel manufacturers are resolutely sticking with the shovel-it-in:churn-it-out system.
Having said that, if you take up some of the old 3x2s from the 60s or earlier, many of which were manufactured locally in small man-and-shovel plants, they are hard as bloody iron!
Posted: Wed Nov 21, 2012 9:37 am
by GB_Groundworks
our foreman was telling me about his firsst job, running the bucket on the drag shovel mixer on site, before ready mix concrete it was all batched on site, he started as a 15 yr old on walking with the bucket all day mixing concrete on civild jobs for Wades