I am redesigning the back garden of a house I moved in to a few years
ago and as part of the new design I need to move a good sized patio. To
keep things simple I plan to re-use the existing 60 slabs. The problem
is that these slabs are much heavier than the normal purpose made garden
paving slabs I have used in the past.

I have laid a couple of patios over the past 20 years, using slabs up to
450mm square and maybe 30mm thick and I remember it as being hard work,
particularly when it came to positioning and levelling each slab. It was
fine if the slab could be tapped level, first time, but if it needed
relifting and relaying it was really hard on my back.

The slabs I am now about to use are 600mm square and 50mm thick and
therefore weigh about 3 times what the others did. In the past I laid a
full bed of sand over the whole area, then 5 blobs of mortar under each
slab. I'm thinking that this time I should lay, level and mechanically
compact a full sand bed and just lay the slabs straight on to that.

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

TIA

Steve