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Posted: Mon Feb 05, 2018 10:26 pm
by rawoods88
Evening all,
After nearly 20 years of pointing flags with a mortar gun, I am fed up with weather delays.
Can anyone recommend a brush in jointing compound? I'm looking for something easy to install and fairly cost-effective for large paved areas (my last project was just under 80m2).
Also, does anyone have any tips for installation or products to steer clear of?
Cheers
Posted: Tue Feb 06, 2018 1:40 pm
by Tony McC
Avoid any one-part product, they don't last and they fall apart under a pressure washer. Use ONLY a quality two-part resin mortar.
There is more guidance here
Posted: Wed Feb 07, 2018 12:58 pm
by kwdConstruction
I've always used GftK VDW compounds, 800, 810, 815, 850 depending on the material and where it was installed, bought from NCC in Chorley, whip it up with a paddle mixer and squeegee in, simple, fast and looks spot-on. 850 is the badboy compound, but it is ever so slightly trickier to install. It's not brush-in though, you have to pop open the resin and whip it up in a mixer (I use a Belle paddle).
Only problem is these days finding indian stone deep enough to install soundly and still leave the required depth for resin jointing. You gotta get that depth to ensure it doesn't pop off under the force of a power washer (then again, I'm not at all keen on p/wing paving, it exposes aggregate and can destroy the surface - bleach and water like me ol' mum used to use works for me!). So for this reason, when installing the sawn/smoothed/honed super-thin stuff that's effectively more like tiling than laying flags, I go for the traditional approach and use a tough and stiff sbr-infused mortar mix in a bucket by my side, and joint as tightly as possible with a well-worn 10mm finger trowel as I lay on a full mortar bed.
Back in the day I did use the bagged stuff a couple of companies offered, but had to go back a couple of times to a single job - the only time I've ever had to do remedial work on a job in over a decade working for myself. So forget the easy-this and geo-that, those Germans have the proper stuff.
BTW, as an experiment, and going against the advice on the product spec sheets and my own common sense, for my own small patio I took regular old medium-size tegula-style block paving, cracked them in slightly-angled halves and installed them in a euro-fan style cobble sett layout with proper gaps between them. I took 2 tubs of 850, mixed them up with half a bag of kiln dried sand each and dropped the lot in. 8 years later it's still absolutely pristine bar one small crack due to roots from a 50' tree that came down recently. That stuff is the real deal, even when abused beyond spec by numpties like me 