Patio slabs to be layed

eiei0

Hi all

I have a 35m2 patio i am thinking of laying my self but I'd rather get someone to do it if it was not going to cost the earth,

I have the ground dug out and the 804 base in and the surrounding walls built,

I'm just afraid of messing it up so would like a expert to do the finished work,

What sort of cost per meter would i be looking at,

There is 3 sizes of slabs and a sunrise center piece in the middle nothing to fancy,

Thanks

If anyone could recommend anyone in Kildare I'd be greatful, by pm to keep the mods happy,

fred funk }{

You've the hard part done. Do some reading up on laying the slabs and give it a go.

Luckysasha

Check out www.pavingexpert.com. Great site for advice on paving. I followed the step by step guide for paving and laid well over 50 m2 myself

Seve OB

I bought a patio years ago on a whim with the mrs one sunday afternoon. They gave us some numbers to call for fitting. We are talking about the same size as yours, maybe a bit bigger, including a large step area and a circle feature and a little wall around it, 3 blocks high, probably about 12 meters long. I got home and started the digging, then rang around a few guys the next day. F that....... I kept digging!! They wanted about twice what the hardware cost just to lay it. From memory, about ?2.5k, that was about 9 years ago.

The digging was a beast though, our garden sloped up, so you were nearly digging twice the required amount out to make sure the levels were correct. Luckily I have a bro-in-law who owns a hire shop and got a mini digger, earth compactor and cement mixer from him. I was also able to get some help and someone to take all the earth away on a trailor for free. Without any doubt, the digging was the hard part, then wheelbarrowing all the earth out the side of the house and the hardcore, sand and slabs back in. If you have all that done, the rest is a piece of piss! Well, it's hard work, but very doable. I'd never done anything like this before, but knew what I wanted to achieve and am a bit of a perfectionest, so no shortcuts were taken.

You have all the hard work done, and the walls built, so you are well able. Just remember to get some decent weed control fabric everywhere. you would need a compactor to get the foundations of the hardcore right, I seen handmade manual options, but you would want to be mad!

Make sure you have good drainage off it. That was my mistake, but having said that, I put so much hardcore down followed by a good layer of sand, it does drain reasonably well, just got a little water sitting when we get a proper downpour. I drilled a few holes (in the pointing) around the patio and that actually drains the water very well. I think I put down about a foot of hardcore and a foot of sand. If I was doing it again, I would put something like this around the edges


We were running it up to an existing path outside the back door, so if you are doing somethin similar, just remember to measure correctly the depth of the slab and leave the proper gap when you level off the sand. I'm pretty sure I mixed the sand a dry mix of sand and cement, not sure on the ratio, but maybe 3:1. It was recomended doing the same for the pointing. That was a disaster cause it was just a breeding ground for weeds, so I ended up putting in a wet cement mix. Sometimes I get a few weeds growing in the drainage holes I drilled, but you can pick them out if you get them early enough or if the roots go a bit deeper, a blast of the powerhose sorts them out in a jiffy.

Good luck, the rewards are great and always better when you have done it yourself.