How to pave and different paving styles explained | DIY Garden Projects | Gardening Australia

you all know that I love plants but did you know that I have another passion and it's for this stuff here Paving the benefits of Paving are many and if you get it right it'll last you a lifetime it's not that difficult once you know how to do it so today I thought I'd show you how to lay perfect painting before you go and get the tools out the important thing is to look at the area you're in you need to assess your land and decide what job the pavers are doing is it a little path between garden beds how heavy is the traffic are cars going to drive and park on it the more reactive the soil and the higher the use of the pavers then the more reinforcement will be required to make sure that the pavers can handle the pressure now before you get going you need to consider the style that you want if you're going to pave a driveway you probably want to go with brick pavers because they're practical and they're really durable so you probably want to go with a herringbone pattern because this way they lock together which give them a real strength to resist the forces that are going to be placed on them if you're looking at an area with less traffic perhaps a path through garden beds bricks is still a good option for a traditional look like a basket weave pattern or stretcher Bond patterns you could try crazy Paving which is the random but careful placement of irregular Stone pieces but be warned it does require patience because each piece is different thicknesses and you'll have to work a bit harder to get it level but think of it like this it's a jigsaw puzzle that you're putting together and the end result look at it it's spectacular you could also try Sandstone which works really well in the garden and as a natural material look at it each piece gives you that variation which is lovely to look at and it does well in situations like this under pergola's and patios however it is porous which means it can stain if you don't take care of it and get a buildup of mold or algae it's not one for around the pool even though it gives a beachy Vibe being so porous It suffers not only from water damage but from chemicals and acids found in pools so this is the area that I'm going to be Paving it's joining that path back there with this concrete slab I've got these terracotta pavers to do the job the first thing to do is measure the space you're working in this is important so you can work out how many pavers you need to buy you don't want to end up with heaps more than you need and seven Paving is only as good as its base so preparation is key what you need to do is start at the top and say all right we've got a fixed concrete slab top there as well as the pavement up there so we need to work down and say right the paver is 40 mil the paving sand is 25 that's 65 plus around the 75 to 100 of road base to allow for the bumps and bruises so that's around 160 millimeters that has been excavated down here so what I need to do is bring the base in so I'm just going to continue to level this out I've now got what I call my leveling rake I call it a Wonder level and I can just go over it a bit and that will just give it a rough level and then the next step after that is to start to compact it and there's a few options there you can do this manually if the area is small or if it's larger you can use a plate compactor the compacted base layer underneath provides higher resistance and greater stability for your pavers so what I'm doing here is setting up the string at the extremities of the paving so the path is going to be 1.5 meters and I've transferred that from the edge of that piece of concrete slab to there and then I've taken that up to the path the second tool is these steel rails and they are key if you have some of these your Paving will go from Humpty Dumpty to a really professional finish now the rail is basically the top of the sand or the bottom of your paver so I can set that in and then it's like a train track because you want all those pavers perfectly level and I can run a steel Edge or a screed across that like a train track and that will level it out and I can also play with the rails so if I've got this one and that one level then the Pavements level I can raise this one to make the water fall that way or I can raise or lower it that way to make the water fall this way or that [Music] so we're now at the point where everything has been leveled the rails have served their purpose and you can see that the fall from this rail to that one which is across the paving is about that much so that's perfect that's about 25 millimeters which means the water is going to run down into the garden bed so this layer that I'm screeding off is the bedding layer which the pavers will sit in and that's got a little bit of give so that it allows the paver to lock into it you can use in this case it was some leftover river sand but you can also use Crusher dust now if you get this right here then you're not worried about each of the individual pavers because this is level and you just lay them down bang bang so you'll find sometimes that you might end up with a bit of a divot in the screeded surface because there's some rocks or Twigs or whatever it may be so all you need to do is get the big rock out and then throw some fines in there and then with a a wooden float just go over it tap it down and there you go well that's the rough screeding complete now all I need to do is lift out these rails fill in the void and get started with the paving now to get started I'm using this corner as my beginning point so the first paver goes in there off this string line and then away we go now it's important to get your line straight the other thing to remember is these pavers have a top and a bottom that's curved on this side and that's the top and they come together beautifully like that now it's time to begin the herringbone pattern so I'll start here and put the first brick in and I'll get started a little and then run some string lines down the middle because they're key to good Paving is that you work to your string lines because the pavers will always be a bit wonky and that's what's the difference between Humpty Dumpty job and a professional finish which is appealing to the eye and don't forget some gloves your hands will thank you at the end of the day [Music] think of it as like the front the easiest way to do it is Mark one at each end like that and then with this piece of wood there's my line and each of the headers is going to follow there so I'll mark that on the paving and then I'll take these pavers away cut them and put the remainder in and then the header will fit perfectly foreign this is a critical detail and a lot of times it doesn't get done well this is what we call parging or putting a haunch against the edge because it's the edge that's the weakest link because if you tread on there that's going to flip it and buckle it and crunch it down so what I've done is Chip it away underneath to about a third inside the paver and then I've made up this reasonably not wet but not dry mix and I push it under so you want it you want to get it underneath the paver and it's okay if it lifts the paver a little bit because then what you can do is just Tamp it down to get it level again but the next key is the floating off a lot of times people have it level and then what happens is you can't mulch there water will run there what you want to do is get it 45 degrees and then you can float it off and get it about halfway up the paver there you'll get this beautiful floated finish I I really enjoy this part because that locks it in [Music] well there you go the job's finished to this point basically now all I've got to do is repeat the process and that'll close it out to the path behind me some simple practical ways to take your Paving to the next level give it a go [Music]

Channel: Gardening Australia

Views: 47,745

Keywords: Gardening, Gardening Australia, garden, gardening tips, gardening advice, plants, how to, ABC, ABC TV, paving, paving diy, paving DIY, how to pave, pave, pavers, how to pave a path, do it yourself, DIY, paving guide, how to lay pavers, herringbone pattern, Running bond, Circular paving pattern, Flagstone, Stretcher bond paving, Stack bond paving patterns, Circular paving patterns, Basket weave paving patterns, Random paving patterns

Id: sNftVZWQH84

Length: 10min 50sec (650 seconds)

Published: Fri Oct 06 2023