Paving the yard with hand-made paving slabs

Recommendation points

• Manufacturing of removable formwork
• Required materials
• Paving the yard with self-made tiles

This article will discuss not only how to properly lay paving slabs, but also how to pre-manufacture it with minimal labor and material costs..

Every owner or hostess wants to have a well-kept yard. Green spaces, no matter how you look after them, will not look good if the rest of the yard or plot is overgrown with weeds. There are many options for how to equip the surface of the earth so that it is well-groomed and easy to walk – sowing lawn grass, paving paths or paving with paving slabs. Any of the solutions requires its own investment, and considerable. There is an option that does not require large material costs – paving the surface with self-made concrete tiles. How to do this is described in this article..

Large surfaces imply certain requirements for the size and shape of the tiles. A small one will require a large amount of work on manufacturing and installation. Tiles of a simple shape – square or rectangular – are not easy to lay, avoiding the curved lines of the seams, and they can be seen very well on the surface from such a tile. In addition, the large number of tiles required requires a large number of molds to make them. You can avoid all the problems described if you make the tiles right on site using a removable formwork of a hexagonal configuration.

Manufacturing of removable formwork

The following form is made of metal:

To do this, cut 6 rectangular strips 600×50 mm in size. Lay in a hexagon and weld. Ideally, you need to slightly fill the top of the strips into the hexagon. We weld on a couple of handles. You will need one form, all the tiles will be made on it, so special attention should be paid to the quality of the manufacture of this device. We process the seams with a grinder so that there are no protruding parts. All surfaces should be as flat and smooth as possible.

Required materials

To make tiles we need:

1. Sand on the base pillow. The calculation is approximately like this – 0.05 m³/ m².
2. Ready-made sand-cement mixture 0.05 m³/ m² finished tiles, or sand plus cement in a ratio of four to one of the same volume.
3. Geotextile film made of non-woven material over the entire tiled area. It is necessary so that grass does not grow between the tiles. If the weeds in the seams do not bother you, then you can refuse the film.

Paving the yard with self-made tiles

1. We are clearing the area for the future sidewalk. We remove the top layer of soil to a depth of 100 mm. We align and ram. We remove roots and stones.

2. Cover the surface with a film. The surface can be pretreated with Roundup or Tornado Weed Control. This will further inhibit the growth of unwanted grass..

3. Fill the surface with sand with a layer of 50 mm. If the sand is not cleaned, then it must be sieved so that debris and stones do not come across. You can use an old armored bed for this. We just set it at some distance above the ground and throw in the sand with a shovel. All debris will remain on the surface of the bed, and clean sand under it.

4. Thoroughly ram the sand cushion, spilling it with water. For ramming, you can use a home-made device in the form of a block with handles nailed to it. You can also nail in a square piece of 10mm plywood from below. The quality of the ramming is checked very simply – walk on the sand, if there are practically no traces left, the sand does not crumble, then everything is done well.

5. Pull the guide thread along the edge according to the level so that the surface is even and neat.

6. Prepare a cement-sand mortar at a rate of four to one. We pour four shovels of sifted sand and one shovel of cement. Mix and add water. The mortar should be very dense, drier than if you were going to lay brick or plaster.

7. We get the finished solution.

8. Place our form in place. We fill it with a solution. Since the mixture is quite dense and not fluid, we hammer it tightly and level it.

9. Gently tapping on the sides of the form with a trowel, remove it from the solution. We get a ready-made tile, already lying in the right place, which does not spread, since the solution is dry enough.

10. In order to make it easier to remove the form from the solution, it is necessary to moisten it abundantly each time before use..

11. We make other tiles in the same way..

12. The edge of the paved surface can be left as is, or it can be aligned in a straight line. To do this, you will need to make another shape with the same parameters, but in the shape of a triangle.

13.With its help, along the edge we make triangular tiles, forming a straight line of the side edge.

This is how a neat courtyard can be created with minimal costs for the family budget. Similarly, if you turn on your imagination, you can come up with other shapes for the tiles. In addition, while the formwork has not yet been removed, you can apply a pattern on the surface of the tiles with a simple relief stamp..