"The Natural Philosopher" wrote in message
...
Steve wrote:


Does anybody have any experience of laying slabs like these? Any advice
or tips to help me survive this job would be very welcome.


Yup.

I laid my sandstone slabs - and teh big uns were about 55kg each - on a
wet bed of about 7:1 sharp sand and (white in my case) cement, after
roughly levelling with hardcore MOT type I and gravel.

By getting the consitency right, and its rather critical - and using
about 1-2" of the 'mortar' I could tap them down with a mallet, and the
excess oozed off.

I found getting the level right with sharp sand rather difficult: if you
don't
get the right amount for a solid bed underneath the slab, tapping it down
only works up to a point, as it 'locks' solid beyond a certain amount of
compaction. I tried using a sloppy mix so it would ooze out the side of
the slabs more easily if I was banging the slab down but that didn't work
well. I had to lift and relay plenty of slabs to get their level right.

I came to the conclusion afterwards that I would have been better off
using builders' soft sand and some plasticiser, plus raking furrows in
the cement to allow easier compaction, so that the slabs could be knocked
down to the correct level. I've never tried my theory but I can't imagine
it's as
hard as using sharp sand.

On the subject of spinal discs, I would echo the warning a previous poster
gave.
I was manouevring a lot of 40kg slabs about, and 40kg bags of sand etc over
an extended time period, and I had a dull ache in my lower body that
wouldn't
go away for over a year. I only figured out it was back trouble, in fact
probably
disc trouble, when I started getting shooting pains in my legs whilst
picking
up heavy slabs. I think a disc had squeezed out and started to compress my
leg
nerves! I finished the heavy lifting but although the dull ache went, I have
trouble
getting my socks on quite a lot of mornings now!

Andy.