Home Repair and Paint Guide

... A sand/cement mix is not very difficult to handle. It has the advantage of preventing all the problems with sand alone, and locks everything in-place. Using a cement slab for installation is a lot of work. I would only go this way for pavers that have to handle a heavy load, such as vehicle traffic. It’s not necessary for a patio installation. Regardless of the type of bed selected, you first have to excavate the area so the bed is thick enough to withstand temperature extremes and expected load. Follow the manufacturer’s instructions if available. If not, then use a standard bed depth of four inches. Take your time and as with all home improvement projects, planning is the key. Make sure you have enough material on the site to complete everything once work starts. Draw an outline of the area in the dirt with a stick and step back to see how it will look. Lay the pavers on top of the ground to get a better visual and also line up any patterns you are using. If you need an extra set of hands, as a friend to help. Promise a nice cookout as a reward on your new patio. This type of bribe usually works!. ... Pavers are great for building patios and sidewalks. They are not very difficult to install and add a nice, finished touch to your home. Pavers last for many years as long as they are installed properly using the correct mortar. Generally speaking, brick pavers are more robust and wear better than concrete types. With concrete, the color pigment eventually dulls and wears off the top surface. This causes them to look old and faded ...

... Now we have everything needed to complete the calculations. 480 x .333 = 159.84 cubic feet. This is the total area expressed in cubic feet. To convert this to yards, divide by 27: 159.84 / 27 (cubic feet per cubic yard) = 5.92. Round this up to 6 cubic yards. Add about 10% for waste and you should be OK. In this case, that would be 6 x 1.10 = 6.6 yards. Most concrete companies deliver whole yards only, so for this project I would order 7 yards. Since most areas to be filled with concrete have a few low spots, you will quite likely use the entire amount of material. ... Here’s a question that keeps popping up during home construction projects - “How do I calculate the amount of concrete needed to fill an area?” The answer is simple once you know a few basic terms. For this article we will use an example - pouring a slab for a detached garage. Concrete is ordered by the cubic yard, and is abbreviated to just “yard”. A cubic yard contains 27 cubic feet, and the measurement is 3 feet wide, 3 feet high, and 3 feet long, or 3′ x 3′ x 3′ = 27 cubic feet. This forms the basic unit of measurement for ordering concrete. Getting back to our example of pouring a slab for a detached garage, let’s use measurements of 20 feet wide, 24 feet long, and 4 inches thick. Start by calculating the square feet of surface area. The formula is: 20′ x 24′ = 480 square feet of surface area. That part is easy enough. It’s the standard square foot measurement that everyone is used to. But now we have to get those inches in there somewhere, and that’s the part that seems to confuse a lot of people ...