In article , Jon
Connell writes
I currently have a 90cm high run of steps running across the back of the house
going down into the garden to a ground-level patio. The steps are bonkers steep,
been left to go to hell with weathering and the patio looks like crap anyway. So, the
wife-approved plan is a raised patio to the height of the initial step more or less like
this:

http://www.colonialstone.com/index.p...mage_full/125/

The final area of the patio is quite large at 5x8 metres so I thought maybe concrete
beams and blocks. They're pretty cheap and it would mean the new patio was very
even and I could build a very slight slope for water to run off. I guess plan B would
be filling the curtain wall with hardcore, but I do like the idea of learning to use
some new materials.

Thoughts or counter suggestions anyone?

Sounds like a great idea, better suited to a pile than decking.

Rolling it over in my head I wondered about not fully beaming out the
floor but slabbing it and only putting beams at the slab joins, so only
supporting 2 edges. Then thought about bedding and moved from cement to
some kind of conformal foam (neoprene?) strip the width of the beams at
a thickness to avoid cobbling but thin enough so there was not constant
vertical movement. Thinking on how to grout the unsupported gaps -
don't, just butt the slabs and allow some drainage into the underspace.

I'd probably give some access to the underside for maintenance or to
deal with potential rodent or insect activity.
--
fred
it's a ba-na-na . . . .