Making a statement with your pavement.

Another area of the garden that we landscaped along with the large pond, was this unused area of the garden. With incredibly hard clay soil, we had no option but to export the clay and import a decent amount of nice fresh topsoil. The flower beds were dug out approximately 400mm deep to accommodate for this.
We imported the soil whilst the paths were being built because we left access at the bottom for the dumpers to drive in and out, and worked from the top down.
The first part of the construction was to lay all of the outer bricks on a concrete mix. We calculated what height we wanted the finished paving level to be at either end, and then used a very tight string line to give us a height and line to work to. Once the outer bricks had set hard, we filled the rest of the path with compacted sub base, leaving ourselves 75mm down from the finished hight. This would be later filled by 50mm of mortar, and 25mm of slab.

For the paved areas we used a 6/1 sharp sand mortar mix, and it was very easy to lay the slabs to the correct level, as the outer bricks were already in. We used a spirit level that was long enough to reach the bricks on either side, and just tapped the slabs down to this level. When laying an patio or pavement, it’s important to think about the rain water. Decide where you want the water to run off to, and slope the paving in that direction. A general rule is to slope the paving 1-100. So for every meter, the paving falls or rises 1cm. This will not be noticeable on foot, and will let the water run off so you will not have any puddles. For the brick paved areas, we laid the bricks in a herringbone pattern, on compacted sand. As it was in a circle, the outer cuts took 3 times longer than it took to lay all of the whole bricks within the circle.

There were 2 brick circles. One near the top, and the bottom one which formed the top of a set of steps. This took a bit of brain work to get correct. The heights of the steps needed calculating as usual, but with this one we had a mix of 2 materials to contend with, they all had to be built off a radius point, and the slabs needed to be cut on all 4 sides, front and back on a radius (different for each step) and mitred on the sides.

But we were incredibly pleased with the result. 👍