Patio Laying

[stevenrafferty]

I need to relay a patio area at the rear of my house and am confused about what to bed the slabs onto. The patio is only ever going to have foot traffic, BBQs, etc.

I have read on one website that a mix of sand & cement (10:1), dry, is fine and bedding a slab at a time, rahter than screeding the area would be best.

However, I have seen others lay then on a wet mix, which looked like regular cement.

Any ideas?

 

[IanDB]

There are many sites that give you differing advice. I found this one http://www.pavingexpert.com/layflag1.htm pretty useful and laid my flags following their guidelines.

From what I can gather (and a small bit of experience) if it's not going to take much weight then you're OK with a good bedding layer of 10:1 sand/ cement mix. I did consider using a wet mix but in the end it seemed to be too much hassle.

For info, I estimated the quantities OK but having used a bit of rubble as a base I found I had too much sand left over. However I'd bought it from Travis Perkins and they took back the excess (it was bagged) and gave me a refund which I thought was pretty reasonable. (It also meant my wife was happy not to trip over five bags of sand every time she tried to get into her car.)