In the process of improving the suburban area, I was faced with the need to lay out part of the territory with paving slabs, or, more precisely, with paving stones. With a small volume, I would have handled it myself, but I will not master a large square. Therefore, on the recommendation of a friend, I hired a construction team.
Having agreed with the workers, I went to the store for the tool, ordered the tiles themselves, cement and sand from the firm. I also borrowed a concrete mixer from a neighbor. On the appointed day, the builders were at the site. The chief of them studied the territory with which they had to work, examined the tools and materials.
Seeing a pile of sand, the foreman said shortly: "This will not be useful to us!"
Naturally, I was surprised. How can washed, seeded, river sand not come in handy? I must say right away that I didn’t skimp on materials. Why did the foreman not arrange my sand? Everything turned out to be much more confusing! I'll try to bring you up to date.
We live in the South Urals. I have seen many times how paving slabs are laid, and they always used river sand mixed with cement for this purpose. Of course, I also bought high-quality materials so that the builders would do everything efficiently and reliably. But the foreman opened my eyes to some things.
He said that his guys will do everything at the highest level. He even gave a guarantee that the tile will lie without any complaints for at least 10 years.
The foreman assured that the tiles would not crumble, split and fall apart over time. I thought that the person is experienced, knows more than me, so I did not argue.
In addition, the foreman promised that weeds would not grow in the tile seams.
Agreeing to the new terms, I set off behind granite fine screeningsas the builder advised me. Note that sometimes the screenings are diluted with a herbicide powder. In my case, it was simply mixed with cement.
What is screening for? In order to prevent weeds and grass from growing through the tile joints. Even with heavy rainfall, the grass won't have a chance to take root.
Grass in the screening of granite does not germinate!
The situation is different with river sand. Even if it is washed and sieved several dozen times, it will not be possible to completely get rid of the seeds. Over time, vegetation will appear on the tiles, which is extremely difficult to eradicate, especially when it comes to plantains, dandelions, etc.
The next advantage of the dropout is high weight. Combining it with cement, we get a solid, non-crumbly monolith.
Plus, sifting is able to take on most of the load from soil sinking. That is, the paving slabs are laid on a solid slab. To increase the strength of the material, you can cover the screenings with a welded mesh, and then spill it abundantly with water.
I personally followed the work of the builders, supervised all processes. It seemed unusual to me that they hit the tile only two or three times, and it quickly took the desired position. I'm used to the fact that builders hit the cubes with all their might so that they stand up as needed.
Thank you for reading the article to the end! I will be infinitely happy about your like 👍 andsubscribing to the channel.