This property had an area of land at one end which was being used for parking the second family car. It was fine in the summer but turned into a muddy mess during wet periods and the car would drag mud way up the street.

Our customer asked us to create a block paved area suitable for parking and in keeping with the colours and style of the area.

The first task was to excavate the area to a depth of 200mm to create the sub-base. The ground was then covered with a layer of geotextile terram weed barrier and covered with 100mm of type 1 granite scalpings.

The scalpings were then firmly wacked into place using a vibration compaction plate to form a good, solid sub-base to build off.

Next we needed to install the edgings. The customer wanted to maintain a shrub border against the house so we installed precast concrete bullnose edgings to hold the blocks firmly in place.

Against the existing kerbs we laid a soldier course of charcoal blocks. These could have been laid later but it gave us a good established edge to screed off for our grit layer.

With the edgings and sub-base in place we could now fill in with washed grit and screed to the correct level. The figure on the right shows how to make a simple guage that will help with this process.

Remember that the grit needs to be set 5mm high to allow for final compaction so if using 50mm thick blocks then dimension A should be set to 45mm.

The required pattern was herringbone so we set about laying our blocks from one corner and running in a soldier course against the edgers to match the kerb side.

With the main body of blocks in place the cuts were put in where full blocks would'nt fit. Don't put in skinny cuts. It's better to turn the blocks and put in larger cuts as can be seen on the right.