The Easy Way to Lay Block Paving

i have gravel all over my drive which isn't a problem until you have to put the bins out especially if they're full so today i'm going to show you how i laid this nice effective block work path that tidies this area up gives me somewhere to store the bins and makes taking them out to the road an awful lot easier no respect [Music] in these strange times we live in with supply chain problems i think it's prudent not to start any projects without first having all the materials you need in your possession so the first thing i did on this job was to ensure that i had delivered all the blocks type one stone and sharp sand needed to carry it out here i'm going to be laying a charcoal block paving path up against this curved brick wall one and a half metres wide by around eight meters long this will be wide enough for me to pull a bin past another and get it out onto the road for pickup i start by roughly marking out the perimeter with some line marking spray paint and removing the thin layer of gravel that covers the whole area no vehicles will ever drive onto this paving so i've designed it for foot traffic only similar to a garden path or a patio and i also want to cut as little number of blocks as possible to simplify the job so i'll be laying a curved stretcher bond type pattern that follows the wall radius the final level of the blocks along the wall i want to match this brick course so i place a few blocks on sand to get a feel of how much ground i need to remove and then start digging i've calculated i have just under two cubic meters or two and a half yards of earth here to excavate in what we call the solid that's in its current compacted position once it's dug out you can easily add another 25 or 30 on top of that in volume as it's going to bulk up in the loose so best to have an adequate place in mind to put it before you start so what i'm doing here is every now and again while i'm digging this out i'm just finding a level that's around about correct for what's called the formation that's underneath my type one and just putting a bit of a spot mark on it and that gives me some sort of idea of where i am level wise if i don't do that i have no idea and it's very easy to over dig and remove too much material before you know it you're bringing it back again so this way at least it gives me an idea of where we are and whether i'm digging to the right depth yesterday essentially i excavated and got down to what we call formation that's essentially the lowest point we're going to go on this and if you've got any friends that can come and help you definitely definitely invite them for the digging part because that's definitely the hardest job today is a lot more fun we're going to start bringing this up and by the end of the day i should be just about finished it's going to be quite a busy day so what i need to do now is get the whacker plate on this soft saw to make sure this is fully compacted before i put any sub base on top of it now in the uk for sub bass we tend to use a material called type 1 or mot or mot type 1. now if you've ever wondered why we call it that go and see me in the garage and i'll explain it all to you sub base or road base as it's sometimes called is the main foundation layer to any road runway taxiway car park or even the patio in your back garden it can be made out of different materials such as slag or crushed concrete or even recycled materials but normally you'd find it in its virgin state and because of that it can be made out of different types of rock and come in different colors i've got some examples here that have all been delivered to this location you've got red granite blue gray granite or even this crushed limestone to meet the usual road specification this material in whatever country you're in has to pass a number of tests such as hardness water absorption placidity and a load of other stuff that our civil engineers like to play around with but for the average diy all you really need to know is that it has to be a hard crushed rock and it has to be what's called well graded and what that means is that within the material there's large pieces of rock there's medium pieces of rock all the way down to a fine material as well what that means is if you put some water with this and then compact it well with a plate compactor or a roller you're going to get to a point where it's almost as hard as a weak concrete but without the cost as well so why is it called mot type one well on any road project you'll always be given a specification from the client that your materials have to conform to and when it comes to aggregate you're gonna be using more of this than any other type so they naturally called it type one there is a type two three and four referring to different materials and the client that first did that is who were you used to build roads for in this country which was the ministry of transport hence mot type one so now you know i lightly damped down the surface to help with compaction and just to stop the dust kicking up and i'll give it a couple of passes with my plate compactor this is a great bit of kit that i did a review of a few weeks ago so if you're interested in having a look there'll be a link in the description below i cut up a few still road pins and put a point on the end so i can use them as level pins for setting out i hammer them into the ground just outside of the paving perimeter and then transfer a level from the wall to the pins using tape so i have an accurate final level on either side by taking some random measurement dips between the pins and the temporary blocks i can check i've dug out enough material i'm aiming at 75 millimeters or three inches of bedding in total here which will be fine for foot traffic loading on a job like this your materials want to be delivered as close as possible to the work area to save you having to move tons of material around i'm lucky here that that's been easy for me to do i spread out the type 1 stone evenly checking the levels regularly before adding some water as this material is really very dry and start compacting i gave the whole area around about four passes to make sure it was well compacted you really can't over compact type one so if you're ever in doubt just go over the area again after a few passes it's pretty easy to tell if the material is still moving under the plate anymore or it's got to its limit with the type 1 in place i moved on to the sharp sand and put a good 30 40 millimeter inch and a half layer on top of the sub base and then compacted again i always learn something new on every project i do and on this one i found out what happens if you don't fill up your plate compactor with petrol it stops working crisis over i gave the sand another couple of passes all over the screed rails i'm using here are a couple of timber battens left over from my garage door build but you can use pvc pipe or steel pipe for instance as long as it's straight i dig the battens into the sand and set the top of them level to the underside of the future blocks with a small fall away from the wall to shed rain water once in position i carefully compact sand around and underneath them so they won't move as i screed i then top up the area with even more sand and start screeding i must say i always find screeding with sand very satisfying as it isn't difficult and very quickly you produce a nice flat surface ready for the blocks using a concrete or plastering float with an undamaged flat blade i find really helps move the sand around while keeping the whole surface nice and flat [Music] once the first section is screeded the rails can come out and be replaced with additional sand i like to push this into the hole firmly to compact it as much as i can before using the steel float to take off the excess and level it the left-hand edge of this paving has a 10.5 meter radius to it as in the future i intend to extend this first line of blocks on a curve all the way to the garage so i use a template i've cut out with a jigsaw to help me get these in the right line then as is traditional i start laying the blocks in double time to something that reminds me of a benny hill sketch it's really important that the blocks go down vertically so the sand isn't disturbed until the majority of the block touches it so i'll get into the rhythm of sliding the blocks down the side of the previous course the last edge course i lay as a soldier course and try to make sure the gaps are even around the radius the blocks in the middle of the pallet are still wet from recent rainfall hence the dark colour of some of them but they soon dry out then it's just a repetitive process of laying moving blocks and screeding [Music] so the way i'm leveling these screeds is what's called line full that's where you use a spirit level but rather than getting the barrel in the middle of the two lines you actually get it to touch one of them that means i've got a slight slope away for the water to drain away from this wall at the end of the run i decided to finish it off with a radius rather than a square edge just to make it more interesting then it was on to the cuts i haven't got many cuts here so there's a little point in hiring a block splitter for the day so i started by trying to split them with a bolster chisel which i've done successfully in the past this time though i don't know if it's a type of block or me but they either kept breaking in totally the wrong place or i'd be left with a large bulbous end which would take me some time to remove and get flat and my makeshift workbench was also taking some damage too so i switched to plan b cutting them with an angle grinder which worked out a lot better albeit a lot messier doing it this way i found i could be a lot more precise and within the time it would have taken me to drive to and from the higher company to pick up a block splitter i had them all cut and in place [Music] the next morning was time for the most fun part of this project sweeping in the kiln-dried sand [Music] after sweeping it into all the joints i use my compactor on a low setting with the supplied rubber mat fixed under the plate to bed down all of the blocks while making sure that there's plenty of sand available on the surface if the joints needed topping up you'll notice here that i'm keeping away from the edge courses as currently they have no restraint and will just collapse if i put the plate compactor onto them [Music] now this is the slightly unconventional part of what i'm doing today and that's doing the concrete surround to stop the perimeter blocks moving at the end rather than at the beginning now this doesn't work on a driveway because the perimeter blocks on a driveway need to be fully bedded with concrete to give them enough strength that when a car rides on top of them they don't move this isn't the case because this is really just like a footpath so the loading is completely different so what i've done here is i've actually undermined the blocks by about 30 40 ml inch inch and a half all round so i can get concrete underneath here and benched on the side that's going to give me enough strength on this perimeter to stop them going down if someone stands on them and enough strength on the side to stop them moving away in time [Music] i mixed up some mortar for the bedding putting some black dye into the first batch to try to match the charcoal gray blocks for the pointing of the radius section which is a one area that will be seen i didn't really know how much to put in so i went for a couple of glugs if you want to know how much a glug is it's obviously less than a cupful but quite a bit more than a splash pointing these segments is a bit of a tricky job and whatever your technique is like me you're sure to get some water on the face of the blocks so i made doubly sure that i cleaned this off really well with an old wet paintbrush [Music] so there you have it it's a hundred percent complete i've replaced the stone all around the outside and it's already being used and i must say putting in that black dye to make grey mortar on the radius section has worked a treat and by like our judgment it's coming out to reasonably good colour as well so i hope you've enjoyed this video if you have please check out the other ones on my channel and please subscribe and you can see already that the bins are a lot happier so that's obviously the main thing so until next time i'll see you then

Channel: Proper DIY

Views: 473,858

Keywords: Paving, Blocks, Footpath, Patio, DIY

Id: 2lp7N5GXqtk

Length: 16min 8sec (968 seconds)

Published: Fri Oct 01 2021