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Posted: Fri Feb 04, 2011 11:16 pm
by London Stone Paving
My sister who works on our front desk is pretty new to the world of paving. She often gets asked technical questions by clients and is constantly putting the phone on hold to ask, "whats the best sub base for a driveway?" or "how much fall needs to be on a residential patio?
Eventually I put her onto the paving expert website. I have not heard a peep out if her since then. She's read the site top to bottom and now talks like an expert on paving installion. She's even talking about building a patio at her house.
Posted: Sat Feb 05, 2011 7:26 am
by seanandruby
I always find it a bit of an oxymoron personally. Do you tell a potential client about the site and run the risk of them diying, so that you could lose the job. Or, don't tell and maybe get it ???
I used to advertise along the lines of someone diying and f****** up, i would get a phone call from a wag saying: could you come and put so and so right. if i remember it went....... '' collapsed walls, leaning fences, sinking patios.'' it was when the last recession was coming to an end, was a good earner on top of the normal work.
Posted: Sun Feb 06, 2011 8:40 am
by seanandruby
Sorry for the use of oxymoron. I have been corrected on my use of it. I used it ( maybe out of context ) for want of a better word. The jury is out on it. Any thoughts ,or comments welcome. Maybe a better word would be juxtaposition. Now i like the word oxymoron and i like the word juxtaposition. But which is best? There's only one way to find out...................Fiiigggghhhhhtttttt!!! :p 
:;):
Posted: Sun Feb 06, 2011 9:49 am
by Pablo
Juxtaposition will do Sean. I regularly refer potential cients here especially the ones who have been poorly advised by other so called pavers and are asking me to lay above dpc etc. Not afraid of losing work sometimes I suspect I'm being bled for info when I'm out quoting but I still give it 100% because it could lead to another job through a recommend.
Posted: Sun Feb 06, 2011 11:00 am
by GB_Groundworks
Oxymoron is something that contradicts itself like it's was a light dark night or it's warm for a cold day etc.
Juxtaposition was what you want, but I refer ppl here when like you say Pablo some numpty assured them 22mm fossil mint will be fine on a drive with a sprinkle of mot on it. I did some work for a builder other day and spouted in his briefcase as he looked for the drawing a load of paving expert printouts and the ones of n
Micks site also
Posted: Sun Feb 06, 2011 11:36 am
by lutonlagerlout
poison chalice or double edged swords are synonyms that i would use
i had to look up oxymoron, and TBH although we all like to act like hairy arsed builders ,the bloke on this site are probably 1% of the building game in terms of vocab and computer usage
I know loads of lads that havent even got a an email address yet let alone a pc
of course i said 1% not the top 1 % by any means :laugh: :laugh:
cheers LLL
Posted: Sun Feb 06, 2011 3:25 pm
by dig dug dan
Just last week i was doing a small paving job at a house where i lost the job of landscaping the back garden.
I can see why i lost the job. I wasn't cheap enough. The slabs are laid with trip hazards all over the place, and he told me that they mixed the pointing up by and in a bucket. needless to say its all coming out, and there is 60sq m that needs re pointing 6 months on.
The customer also let on that he regrets not giving me the job, as not only did they take 6 weeks to do a job that should have been 3, but some days they did not show up at all, and even then it was some young lad unsupervised.
Then the crunch. he told me that they knew what they were doing as the laid the slabs on five blobs!!
I told him in no uncertain terms this was wrong, and he should visit this site for more information.
Problem is he is such a nice bloke, that i doubt he will make a fuss. he was even suggesting he was going to re-point the paving himself!
Posted: Sun Feb 06, 2011 4:04 pm
by Ted
dig dug dan wrote:Then the crunch. he told me that they knew what they were doing as the laid the slabs on five blobs!!
I told him in no uncertain terms this was wrong, and he should visit this site for more information.
It is incredible how many people think dot and dab is the right way to slab.
Two years ago, a friend of mine whose stepfather is a supposed builder paid for 100m2 of Indian sandstone. The stepfather was dubious about my proposed installation method and insisted on dotting and dabbing as he was the one installing them. I mentioned this site as a source to back up my proposed method, but they never looked at it.
Now the patio is full of rocking slabs and several broken ones. They have now looked at the site and realised that they have made a right mess of their patio!
Posted: Sun Feb 06, 2011 7:48 pm
by henpecked
Contrary, dichotomy, duplicitous behavior , conflict of interests and quandary.
Can apply a few of these to your word bending Sean, they can be applied indirectly or directly, depending on the preceding paragraph. Have a play, love a bit of word-smithing 
Posted: Sun Feb 06, 2011 8:23 pm
by lutonlagerlout
It's a braw bricht moonlit nicht the nicht
which translates to "would you like a sheep lung and brain kebab?"
flo joe and digdugdan both saw a patio I had to partially relay in hemel hempstead
the client is so please they want us to relay the rest,the only problem being is that we relaid the 12 M2 properly so they will be a bugger to take back up again 
plus the existing is all on dabs and dobs
c'est la vie!
zut alors
LLL