How to lay paving stones

Today, paving stones have become very popular, which is an ideal material for creating entrances to houses and garden paths. Gradually, it replaced the black and ugly asphalt. A beautiful pedestrian zone can be created with the help of pavers. To make it unique, you must use a tile with a different shape and color. This will help create exclusive patterns and ornaments. In this article, we'll talk about how to lay paving stones correctly.

How to store the paving stones and avoid mistakes

As a rule, before the paving stones are laid in their place, it is stored for some time in stacks. The paving laid on the pallets has a fairly large weight, so it is not unusual for cases, for example, after the rain, the pallets start to fall into the ground. As a result, the upper rows slipped and caused damage to the bottom. After all, the tiles top surface is perfectly flat, and the bottom can not boast of this.

. To avoid such ridiculous mistakes, the following rules should be observed:

• If possible, pallets should be placed on a hard surface that will not work( asphalt, reinforced concrete slab).
• If the pallets are laid directly on the ground, do not put more than 10 rows on them.
• It is absolutely necessary to close the paving stone with foil or tarpaulin so that water does not get on it.

If the tiles are unloaded manually, they must be handled with the utmost care so as not to cause accidental damage to the decorative layer.

Paving stone laying tool

In order to build the pavement tracks carefully and quickly, the following tool kit will be required:

• Hydraulic building level( 10 m).If you do not own a laser level, which costs a lot of money, buy a conventional hydro level.
• The construction of the lumbar bubble level is 1 meter long.
• Metal profile pipe cross-section 20 x 40 mm: 2 meter and 6 meter pieces.
• Steel pointed pins and wooden pegs.
• Kapron cord of white color;
• A large rubber hammer. You need to buy one quality kiyanku or pieces of three Chinese, as they quickly fall apart.

• Trowel.
• Two different roulettes: 2 meters and 10 meters.
• Broom or broom to sweep the seams between tiles.
• Clamp and heavy 100 mm steel corner. Of these, you need to make a fixture to fix the pavers before cutting it.

• with a bolt equipped with a steel disc having a diameter of 230 mm. Use only a steel disc, not abrasive cutting discs. It is better to buy a disk more expensive with normal quality, because cheap samples quickly become unusable and will have to be changed.

Preparatory work on the site for paving

Anyway, the main stage in the construction of cobblestone tracks should rightly be the marking and preliminary careful preparationsite. We recommend the following layer-by-layer order of preparation of the foundation for laying the pavers:

1. Removal of the top layer of soil and laying of the geotextile.
2. Backfilling of a layer of gravel with a thickness of at least 10-15 cm
3. Creating a layer of sand with a thickness of 5-10 cm
4. Sand and cement mortar thickness of 2-4 cm

Depending on the scope of use of the future track and the loads on it, the requirements for the foundation for the pavement may differ slightly. For pedestrian paths it is quite enough to create a preparatory layer of sand with a thickness of 50 to 150 mm. After filling it is necessarily moistened and compacted. The main thing is to observe the proportion of sand and water: so when 1 m² of the area is humidified, only 10 liters will suffice.

Technology of the construction of tracks from pavers

Most often, the laying of pavers is done with the help of a team of trained workers. However, it is quite possible to conduct the whole cycle of work with your own hands. You can consider two ways of laying pavers: on the concrete foundation and on the crushed stone.

Method of laying on the basis of rubble

With this method, a dry mix of sand and cement is always used in the proportion of 1: 6.It is poured on an aligned base, which is covered with a crushed stone layer 100-150 mm thick. Curbs should be installed on a solution of M-100 grade. To reinforce the stiffness, it is allowed to use reinforcing mesh. The tiles are laid in such a way that seams are formed between the individual paving stones, which are necessary to compensate for soil movements occurring seasonally. The technology of this process includes several stages:

• First prepare the site for laying the tiles in accordance with the principles indicated above. The territory is free from all kinds of vegetation, remove the turf, as well as the upper layer of the soil. After that, the earth is rammed up.
• Create a "litter": the first layer of the substrate must withstand the necessary load, because it is poured from a compacted gravel-gravel mixture. At the same time, it is mandatory to observe a minimum 1.5-2% slope angle from the middle to the edge of the track.
• A concrete curb is installed along the edges of the formed platform. For this, it is necessary to prepare a groove in the ground in the form of a furrow, to the bottom of which it is necessary to pour sand. Calculate the depth of this furrow should be so that subsequently the resulting curb was flush with the face of the tile or just below it. This is necessary for normal rainwater run-off. Between the curbs stretch cord, which will play the role of a reference point for further work. Before you put a curb in place, you need to check how much it is level. Often local craftsmen stamp and sell defective products.

• On top of the prepared work platform, the next layer having a thickness of 30 mm should be poured. It is from coarse-grained river sand fraction up to 5 mm.
• The resulting carrier layer must in total be at least - 100 mm thick. Sand is rammed with a rammer. It can be made from a piece of timber with a cross section of 20 x 20 cm and a length of about 1 meter. If possible, then you can rent a vibrator, then the process of laying the tiles will accelerate.
• Begin laying pavers, starting from the curb: the first rows are laid, orienting the edges of the pavers in the direction of the strained threads. The seams between the tiles are filled with sand: it needs to be shifted.

Way of laying on concrete base

This method should be used when cars are traveling on the road surface. This will also be required for too weak, marshy soils. In this case it is necessary to prepare a strong concrete base before laying the stone blocks. For this, in addition to the steps suggested above, you also need:

1. To build a timbering from edging boards or plywood sheets: it is fastened with stakes, which are driven into the ground in a meter from each other. Alignment is made by a stretched cord.
2. The prepared site is covered with a 100 millimeter layer of medium-sized rubble, which is rammed.
3. The concrete is then poured 30 mm thick using a reinforcing mesh. It is better to cover it with a polyethylene film, so that when curing does not form cracks.
4. The paving slab can be started to be laid only after 28 days, when the concrete is completely hardened. The seams between the tiles will need to be filled with a cement-sand mortar.
5. After laying the paving stone is washed with a watering can. This is required not to wash the mixture out of the seams.

Nuances of stacking pavers

The paving stones are laid in the order you like. Most often, "herringbone" is used, but when any other pattern is possible, for which it is desirable to apply a tile of different colors and shapes. In this case, you can use a special color grout - a fugue, which consists of sand with cement and a pigment additive. Align the paved surface with a rubber kyanki.

Recommended slope of the track when laying pavers - 5-15 mm per 1 meter. It is very difficult to lay perfectly paving stones for a beginner, so when the slope is too low, the probability of puddles forming on it is very large.

The pavers should be placed on the pillow with light tapping of a rubber hammer. Each series must be checked by level and taped to the ideal. In a dry mix it is enough to put a brick on 1 cm, and in a little damp for 2 cm. To lay and observe the level it was more convenient to use one trick - to stretch the cord between two profiled pipes, exactly fixed along the edges of the path.

After the laid pavers have settled a little, it needs to be spilled with a dry sand-concrete mixture, then squash so that the seams between the paving stones are completely filled. To do this, you can use a broom from PVC threads.

Attention! It is necessary to sweep the paving stones very qualitatively, without leaving excess cement on its surface. Otherwise, then you have to diligently clean out the solution.

If you listen to advice and do everything according to the instructions, plus have the desire and possibilities, then laying pavers on your own is not so difficult.