How to make paving stones with their hands
The contents
Many owners of suburban areas love to decorate your garden paths with paving. It can emphasize a barbecue area or place to relax. Rectangular paving stones, the most common type of paving, often used for arrangement of blind area of the building or paving easy paths.
Paving compared to conventional asphalt or concrete pavement has many advantages. For example, in the rain on a paved path no puddles, and during the heat of the pavers does not emit harmful substances (which cannot be said about the pavement). In addition, if you need to lay pipelines, the coating in this case can be easily removed and then re-install without worrying about violation of his appearance. And, of course, garden path, decorated walls, looks very nice and neat.
You need to make pavers ↑
Manufacture of paving their own hands in the first place requires a free space in which you can position forming a table and a rack to hold the forms for pouring.
In addition, you will need the forms. If the pavement thinking pattern or any relief on the surface, it is necessary in advance to prepare a special «stigma», for which use hard wire. During mould filling the wire pressed into the surface of the future tiles until then, until you get the desired figure.
To manufacture paving stones require cement, pure water and sand. Brand of cement shall be not less than 500, Oh and the sand we need to take the river coarse. The ratio of cement and sand may be 1:2, 1:3 or 1:4. If desired, a portion of the sand can be replaced with fine gravel. Water use only clean, otherwise the quality of the finished pavers will not be too high. During solution preparation water add slowly and carefully, until the mixture becomes homogeneous.
To laying looked exactly as it had been intended, had the desired properties, you can add gravel or any similar stone, a small steel bars, dry powder dyes, as well as metal rods to provide additional reliability.
To increase the quality of colored pavers, you will need pigment dyes, plasticizers, and reinforcing materials.
Through the use of plasticizers improves the durability of items and their resistance to frost. The plasticizer is usually added in an amount of 0.7-1% of the total weight of the solution, and the dye needed to make the pavement the desired shade, add in an amount of 0.5 to 10% by weight. To strengthen the future strength of the tile through the use of reinforcing materials (reinforcing fibers or metal mesh).
To give the pavement the desired shade you should use mineral dyes. Coloring can be done in two ways:
- The addition of the dye in the solution during mixing. With this method you can get muted, not too bright a shade. It can be used only in case, if the solution is mixed from white cement and light sand, otherwise the tile will not look neatly.
- Products that are at the stage of drying, sprinkle dye which is rubbed gently with a metal trowel. This method will give a very bright and saturated color, but you have to be very careful not to damage the tile surface.
The basic technological operations for the manufacture of paving stones ↑
To prepare the solution perfect simple plastic bucket and a drill (or a drill with a mixer).
The manufacture of paving slabs involves the following steps:
- The mixture is poured into molds about half, then lay the grid of metal rods and fill in the form to the end. This occurs after a compaction solution until then, until the surface will not be smooth as possible.
- Once the solution cleared, take the stamp to apply a pattern and pressed into the surface to the desired depth.
- To decorate the pavers, you can spread the surface with a few small stones, for example in the form of a pattern. In that case, if you need a glossy surface, then it must be carefully polished. To achieve the desired effect, the uncured tiles sprinkle dry cement, which is rubbed into the surface by careful polishing movements.
- Then the mixture has to dry, which takes about three days. Below the surface cracks, which often happens in summer, the surface of the paving tiles periodically moisten with water.
The sequence of stages does not depend on the characteristics and volume of manufactured pavers. In that case, if you want to produce a large number of paving slabs (for example, to obtain Parking near the house), you need to use more powerful equipment.
Large-scale production of paving stones ↑
In the production of large amount of pavers requires much more forms that will significantly speed up the process of its manufacture. Today the construction market you can find a huge number of various models and sizes.
Traditionally, the molds are made of plastic or rubber. Used material and the quality of the finished product, affects its operation (usually from 100 to 500 cycles of the fill). It is necessary to note that form after the end of the period of operation repair almost impossible. In addition to the material for processing directly to the track, you need to think in advance about the supply of tiles needed to repair the coating with continued use (10-15% of the total).
If you try to classify molds for making pavers on the term of service and material that will be released the following list
- Rubber (silicone). Can have glossy and matte surface. Attachments the type of formwork when using it is not required. It lasts for about 500 cycles of the fill blocks. Of course, you can use longer, but the quality of products will decline.
- Plastic has a wide range of different configurations and topography. Approximately 250 cycles fill pavers.
- Polyurethane product, which will last for 100 cycles. Using it makes possible to cast the surface with many small parts.
- Forms for paving stones with his own hands. As homemade usually use wooden boxes, plastic containers, and they are made from scraps of metal pipes. If you want, you can even use the packs of milk.
To prepare concrete solution in the right quantity, you will need a concrete mixer with electric. The working volume of the tank is chosen based on its performance and the number of forms to fill.
To condense the solution for future paving in the forms, uses a special vibrating table for paving slabs. Vibrating table with simple design you can build by their own efforts, with challenging – to buy at the store.
To manufacture the vibrating table with their hands, can take a simple car tire. It is placed on the metallic plate, the thickness of which is about 5-10 millimeters. The plate must be fixed jigsaws, vibrating in an enabled state. In addition, sealed concrete and other method. For this ground, on which there are forms, just a little shake hands.
For drying pavers typically use racks that are installed in places protected from moisture and sunlight. Stand the product in the form should be at least a day. Further, when the products extracted from it, they need another three weeks for complete drying.
Small-scale production of paving stones ↑
If the manufacturer of the pavers will occur in small amounts, you can do without the use of special equipment.
In addition, in such cases it is not necessary to buy even the forms to fill, because if you try, they can be made with their own hands. For this purpose, strips of wood and ordinary nails or screws. The form to make the split, which will significantly simplify the process of Stripping. Given the fact that it can be repaired, their service life is markedly extended.
To give the tile that is poured into an improvised form, an unusual pattern, under it is placed a substrate – rubber Mat with the desired pattern, covered with plastic wrap. If you want, you can buy in the store special stencils with designs that just need to impose on the concrete after it fills and seals. Once on the surface the future of the tile clearly visible pattern, the stencil is removed.
Now you can decide for yourself, is to do the paving yourself or better to pay for a ready.