Laying concrete pavement correctly – instructions

The concrete pavers offered today no longer have much in common with the old, uniform gray exposed aggregate concrete surfaces that we know from unsightly garage entrances. Modern concrete block pavement delight with a surprising variety of colors and shapes and can come up with really ingeniously treated surfaces. You can easily and harmoniously combine them with natural stone elements. The paving can be made a little more “formal” or a little more “natural” in the various connecting areas between the house and the garden, as desired.

Concrete paving is a comfortable material to lay yourself, because due to the industrial production they always have exactly the same dimensions, which makes it easier to produce clean joints. If you also make sure that your concrete paving stones have a so-called bevel, laying is even easier. A bevel is a beveled edge on the stone that ensures that you can see exactly how the next stone is to be laid. Concrete paving stones are also offered without a bevel, which increases the rolling resistance, so driving on such pavement is a bit louder. However, many concrete pavers are equipped with knobs or spacers on the sides, so nothing can go wrong with such stones when laying, and you will be pretty quick with the laying.

When you have found “your” concrete paving, you should find out whether the manufacturer offers a laying plan service, as most manufacturers do today. You can have the exact paving stone requirement calculated here and receive a finished laying plan that will make your work much easier.

Plan the laying of the concrete pavement

Before you start preparing the substrate for your concrete pavement, you should have planned the laying pattern. This laying pattern determines the effect of the concrete paving, whereby the appearance of the surface is not only influenced by the color and surface of the paving stones, but also by the joint pattern.

A lot of variations are possible here, but you should definitely take some time when planning the laying pattern.

Prepare the subsurface

Unfortunately, even with the easiest concrete pavement to lay, you cannot simply start laying, but first have to prepare the substrate for laying. How to proceed:

• The area to be laid must be removed at a certain height in order to apply the so-called base layer.
• The base layer is the water-permeable and stable subsoil that every paving surface needs.
• How thick this base layer has to be depends on the soil on which the concrete pavement is to be applied.
• Loamy soils need a stronger base layer than sandy ones, otherwise the water that penetrates through the joints will not seep into these soils, which could result in frost damage.
• Furthermore, the strength of the base course depends on the load that your concrete pavement will be exposed to.
• The thickness of the base layer is determined when you buy the paving together with the building materials dealer from whom you buy the concrete paving.
• When you remove the earth on the laying surface, start to bring in the slope of the paved surface.
• Every pavement needs a slope to drain away large amounts of rain, which of course must lead away from your home.
• Usually a gradient of one to two centimeters per meter is designed.
• The slope must lead to an area where rainwater can seep away.
• A batter board is attached around the paved area so that you can control the depth of your excavation and the inclination of the slope.
• The batter board marks on all sides the height at which the surface of the concrete pavement will later be.
• This batter board will also help you to adhere to the planned thickness of the next layers later.
• If you want to pavement a large area, you will need to dig large amounts of earth.
• The best thing to do is to borrow a small excavator.
• The mini excavators are rented out in most hardware stores, at fairly affordable rental fees.

Apply base course

When the excavation is done, the layer structure that comes under the concrete pavement is introduced:

• The bottom layer is permeable to water and consists of so-called frost protection gravel. Your requirements will be calculated in the building materials trade.
• This bottom layer must be compacted after application with a vibrating plate.
• You can also borrow this plate compactor from most hardware stores.
• If the concrete pavement is to be driven on, the base course must be able to withstand loads accordingly.
• Here, a gravel-sand mixture is usually worked into the stratification, grain size 0-32.
• Compress this layer as well, gravel follows as the next layer (in the case of less polluted soil directly on the frost protection gravel).
• chotter is a sharp-edged quarry that is now often replaced by recycling material made from rubble.
• This layer is now also well compacted with the vibrating plate.

Build up the installation bed

The so-called installation bed or paving bed is now built on this substructure:

• This bedding for the concrete pavement consists of sand, depending on the load, 4 to 6 cm or more.
• This layer is sometimes called the leveling layer.
• Crushed sand or fine chippings are used as sand here.
• This crushed sand is also called crushed sand, so it is a sand that is created by crushing or crushing.
• This broken mineral has grain sizes between 0 and 5 mm.
• Fine chippings basically consist of the same material, they have a grain size of 2 to 8 mm.
• The noble chippings are “noble” because only double-broken aggregates are used for them.
• This grain has almost the shape of a cube, it is a particularly hard rock grain.
• Sand or fine chippings are now drawn off horizontally over the batter board with a long aluminum lath (gauge).
• If the concrete pavement is only slightly stressed, the pavement bed is now ready, the concrete blocks are now laid in this layer.

Mortar bed for drivable concrete pavement

If your concrete pavement is to be driven on, the surface needs the highest possible stability. That you could make like this:

• Lay concrete blocks in mortar
• Mortar must be permeable to water, otherwise the moisture will build up
• For example, use so-called trass cement and sand, in a ratio of 1 to 5
• the use of waterproof mortar is basically possible
• then make the joints impermeable to water as well
• Paving systems are available for this, in which the joints consist of two-component emulsion.
• Mix the so-called “solid joint” with quartz sand and seal the joints waterproof
• Most of the time, however, the seepable concrete pavement turns out to be more durable and maintenance-free.
• If you create a sealed surface, it can also result in additional taxes.

Once the bed has been peeled off for the concrete pavement, it may no longer be stepped on.

laying

Now we can finally start laying the concrete pavement. To do this, you need a rubber mallet with which you knock on each individual paving stone, and of course your guideline from the batter board, which determines the height of the covering.

Stone by stone is now laid according to the laying plan, when the main area is paved, it is the turn of the cuts. You can cut much more precisely if you get a wet cutting machine for the cuts.

Finishing work on the concrete pavement

The concrete pavement should be secured at the edge so that the pavement edges cannot slip. This is done with a so-called side support or back support, which is made of lean concrete. When this back support has dried, the surface of the concrete pavement can be brought to the intended level with the vibrating plate. The vibrating plate used here should be equipped with a plastic apron, which protects the surfaces of the concrete paving stones.

Grouting concrete pavement

Your concrete pavement now still has open joints, which are kept at the correct intervals by the side bars on the concrete paving stones. You now have to fill these joints. In addition to decorative functions, they also have the task of stabilizing the concrete pavement. Filled joints are a kind of “elastic support” that particularly small-sized stones need, otherwise they would tip over to the sides under load.

Joint sand, usually quartz sand, is used to fill the joints. This joint sand should have the same grain size as the paving bed, so the filling material can also migrate into the joints from below when the stones are shaken, which gives a nice, smooth surface. In addition, jointing sand, which is finer-grained than the sand in the pavement bed, would trickle into it over time, which would cause the pavement to lose more and more stability. The quartz sand used to fill the joints is simply brushed into the joints.

The freshly laid concrete block pavement is then slurried with plenty of water. After drying, you should sweep quartz sand into the joints again.

Harmonious transitions to the garden

Depending on how the concrete pavement and the garden are to each other, there are some elements that you can bring in to create a harmonious transition from the concrete pavement to the green area of ​​the garden. You could e.g. B. let the lawn grow up to the concrete surface, without an edge made of curbs, so with a soft lawn edge. You could also place decorative elements such as a stone fountain between the concrete pavement and the garden green to loosen up the transition.

Conclusion
The concrete pavement that was frowned upon in the past now has a completely new look. Quite a few designers have recently chosen concrete as their favorite material, you can buy really amazing designs here. In the meantime, word has got around that concrete is a building material with an excellent ecological balance that consists only of natural raw materials: cement (mainly ground limestone, clay or other sedimentary rock), small stones and water – basically nothing more in the concrete. Concrete pavement is also inexpensive because production can be cheap, and any normally skilled do-it-yourselfer can lay the pavement himself without difficulty.