Low Cost Solution // LAYING PAVING SLABS

foreign behind my workshop and recently I cleared it all out got rid of all of the weeds and I realized that there's actually quite a lot of space here between this wall and this wall I've got about one meter so I've decided I can make much better use of this space on the ground currently is lots of old gravel and I can reuse this so I'm going to scrape this up with a rake I don't like to waste anything and this 20 millimeter gravel is going to be ideal for a very big and quite intimidating job that will be coming to the channel soon as you can see though it's pretty dirty and there's lots of dead grass leaves and weeds in here so I'm going to wash it all so that I can separate the gravel using this thing called a riddle the soil sinks to the bottom of the bucket the leaves and grass float to the top so I can scoop them all out and the stones are then nice and clean and ready for future use and I've got an old bulk bag that I can store them in with that stretch now clear just around the corner I've got another stretch of land that I can also scavenge some gravel from this area isn't wide enough to make use of for anything other than a walkway but I'm going to work on upgrading this area as well throughout the video it's quite difficult to tell from this footage but right in the corner here is years and years of dirt and debris which has fallen into my garden From the Path and road that are on the other side of this wall so the ground is much higher here and I want to flatten it off and also close this Gap in the wall to prevent all this stuff falling into the Garden in future so here it is once flattened I've got a piece of marine grade plywood here which should be okay for exterior use it should last many years but it will have a tough life as it will be in contact with soil so to help protect it I found an old tin of paint that I'm going to use up on it this is actually hammerite paint so it's designed for metal but it's an oil-based paint so it should be pretty hard wearing and it adhered to the plywood really well and I've got some Roofing Batten which I'm going to screw to the edge to close up the rest of the gap I'm not really precious about how this ends up looking it's there to serve a purpose rather than look pretty I can get it secured to the wall so I'm drilling a six millimeter pilot hole using the SDS drill and then I add some concrete screws which are really quick and convenient as they don't need roll plugs this obviously left a void on the other side so I figured I may as well fill the void with some concrete so I added a bit of MDF to the edge just to use as temporary shattering and I filled the bottom with some rubble and then mixed up some concrete I'll probably add some bricks here in future to close up the Gap better but I don't have any at the moment so for now the plywood will do the job I'm trying not to spend any money on this job so when I found someone giving away lots of Paving slabs on Facebook Marketplace I got in touch straight away and even though it is quite a bit of work loading these really heavy 50 millimeter thick slabs into my car they're going to be perfect for the job before I lay any slabs though I took the opportunity to refresh the masonry page at the bottom of the wall the best way to lay slabs in my experience is between 75 and 100 millimeters of Hardcore or mot type 1 as a sub base that then gets compacted then on top of that 50 millimeters of mortar and then the slabs and that's what I did when I installed the patio two years ago at the back of our house I'll leave a link to that video below however a few times in the past I've also just laid slabs on Sand sometimes even just on top of soil and I'd say maybe three times out of four some of those slabs after a few years might have gone a bit wonky and that's usually because ants and worms will dig their way through the soil beneath the slabs causing them to move for this job though I don't need Perfection this isn't a patio where I'm going to be hosting barbecues it's just an area that I'm going to be using for storage space so I'm just going to make use of what I have which is some concrete rubble from previous building works I've just removed all the bigger bits of concrete and this should compact down to give me a little bit of a sub bass I'm working on the basis of a little bit of foundation will be better than nothing another reason why I think I'm going to be able to get away with less than ideal Foundation is because the slabs I'm going to be using are these massive 600 mil by 900 mil slabs these are the big 50 mil thick ones so there's loads of surface area with these slabs which means they're less likely to go wonky if I was going to be using smaller slabs like these 450 by 450 mil ones I think I'd end up having problems one other thing to mention is that whenever you alter the ground level next to any building you should always consider where the damp proof course is in the building because you need a minimum of 150 millimeters between ground level and the DPC so that moisture cannot track through into the building I'm aiming to get the hardcore spread out and I wasn't sure if I'd have enough to do the full area but I ended up with a layout about 30 millimeters thick on average hopefully it'll be better than nothing it was a little bit patchy in some places though but fortunately I managed to pick up over a ton of sharp sand which was free on Facebook Marketplace too I just went over there with all of the big buckets and bags that I could find and did a couple of trips and I can use this just to fill in any gaps right so the next job is to compact my sub base and I don't have a tamper I don't have a whacker plate either and I didn't particularly want to hire one for such a small job so I'm off to see a man who I'm hoping can help me with this luckily for me I have a good friend who owns a plate compactor and he was kind enough to lend it to me for this project these things are incredibly heavy and really should be lifted by two people so please don't copy what I'm doing here this machine uses vibration to compact the ground beneath it and you can use it on soil sand and aggregates to do this area manually using a tamper is possible but it would take a lot more time and energy and the end result wouldn't be as well compacted either I can then check for level and fill in any low spots to try and level things off as much as possible [Music] I'd already planned ahead and did a drawing for how best to lay out the slabs that I had available and I decided that starting from the corner and working my way out would be best and I start with the 600 mil Square slabs and initially I'm just laying them down dry so that I can mark up the cuts which I need to make to fit around this water meter manhole and I want to leave a gap of about 10 to 15 millimeters all the way around it I made a scoring cut using a diamond disc in my angle grinder cutting a circle isn't easy as the diameter of the disc means you can't cut very deep without ruining the arc so I cut probably about halfway through and then hit it with a hammer hoping it would break in the right place then a bit of cleanup to get rid of the rough Edge I'm going to bed the slabs down onto some mortar and I'm going to use a five to one mix five sharp sand and one cement and then I add some water and a glug of plasticizer this adds air into the mix making it a bit more flexible and easier to work and I wanted the mix to be quite loose because as soon as you lay a slab on this it will dry out pretty quickly and I needed enough time to get the slab sitting level for maximum strength you should do a 50 millimeter bed but I'm only really using the mortar to help me to get the slab sitting level just something to bed them down onto that will firm up and add a bit more strength and if I laid them directly on the compacted sub base leveling them would have been quite difficult and a lot more work time will tell if these slabs stay level in the future but I'm pretty confident it will all be fine I'm laying the slabs level in One Direction but with a very slight lean in the other so that any rain water drains away from the building rather than towards it these 600 millimeter square slabs are the perfect size for the narrower walkway [Music] [Music] thank you [Music] [Music] laying those 600 millimeter square slabs went pretty quickly other than mixing the mortar which was the slow part I do have a slight issue which is that a couple of the slabs are a little bit bigger than the others so you can see them sticking out here but by the time I get this all motored in I don't think anyone will notice so now it's on to laying the 600 by 900 mil slabs to finish off this part here and I think I'm going to struggle to lay them on my own it's not that I can't lift them they are very heavy but the trouble is when you lay the slabs onto a mortar base you kind of want to lay them flat to the mortar because if you kind of lay one end down and then lay the slab down the mortar all pushes to one side and then it's a really difficult job to get them level so I've called for help hopefully my brother will be along later and I can get the rest of these slabs fitted so I thought I'd have a go at cutting the first 900 millimeter long slab using a couple of bits of Timber I prop up the slab and jiggle it around ready to mark up the area that I need to cut away and this was quite an intimidating cut to make because I don't have any spare slabs of this particular size so I need to get it right but it was going to be tricky to break away the part without cracking the slab in the wrong place so this time not only did I score the top of the slab but I also marked up and scored the bottom too my thinking was that surely this cut which was almost all the way through would break off cleanly but I'm sure you can guess what's going to happen can't you I was pretty angry at myself about that but I thought to myself I'm going to have to use it so I'll have to try and patch up the crack later on using those two bits of Timber underneath was actually a great method for laying the slabs alone so I realized I probably could have got on and done this on my own [Applause] I rubbed in as much mortar as I could into the crack then cleaned the excess away and then I sprinkled some cement on top hoping it would help bind everything together and also color match the slab a bit it seemed to work kind of but I won't know until it's fully dry eventually I did have to buy a few bags of sand and another bag of cement to finish the job and then my brother and I could get started on laying the bigger slabs and little did we know at the time that these slabs were hiding a secret from us which would only be revealed once these slabs were fully cleaned at the end it took us a couple of hours to finally get to laying the last slab most of that time was spent mixing if we had a cement mixer we'd have been done a lot quicker [Music] [Music] green they're green and not only were they green my favorite color but also somehow we've managed to luck out on the order that the slabs were laid because they went white green white green white green and the color of these slabs was completely unknown to me at the time of laying in hindsight I really should have cleaned them first and then decided on the order that they should be laid but somehow fate was on my side and I think it turned out pretty nice I filled the leftover Gap with some gravel just to give a bit of space for drainage in total this job cost me less than 20 pounds in materials everything else was free stay tuned for another future project where I'm actually going to be making use of this space thanks for watching foreign [Music]

Channel: Rag 'n' Bone Brown

Views: 641,290

Keywords: woodworking, uk, british, youtuber, keith, salvaged, reclaimed, wood, make, making, how, to, ragnbonebrown, diy, rag n bone brown, rag & bone brown, paving slabs, patio, laying paving slabs, flagstones, flags, flag stones, how to lay paving, how to lay slabs, how to lay flag stones, on a budget, on the cheap, low cost solution, low cost paving, low cost paving slabs, paving on a budget, flagstones on a budget, patio on a budget, patio on the cheap, paving on the cheap

Id: NcHHzyUdSpA

Length: 13min 20sec (800 seconds)

Published: Fri Aug 18 2023