Need advice on setting concrete pavers (BIG ONES)

[s219]

Shoot, I guess I'm too delicate to be around that. It made me cringe every time I ran across something hard.

 

[garacuda]

Flat plate vibrator

Okay, that's about what I thought you were talking about. It's something to consider for sure. Thanks for the idea. Put on some headphones with some AC/DC playing and rock on! My hands get numb riding a motorcycle, this thing might loosen a blood clot or something. :confused2:

 

[Dutch445]

they are some big pavers!
you should be good the way you are doing it,
you can screed your base if you put sand or
stone dust down before your pavers. i used a bunch of
1" conduit. we'd lay them parallel about 5' apart, then screed
with long 2x4s and compact the stone dust. then it was
ready for stone, just use a trowell to fill in those small trenches
where the pipes were.
i wonder how hard it would be to cut them in half? then you could stagger
your joints. if you plan to sweep sand in after, leave 1/4 - 3/8 gap between
the pieces, polymeric sand prevents grass/weeds from growing.
but if they are very tight together i doubt much will grow, and you probably won't get
it to take much sand.

 

[oldpilgrim]

I'd definitely put sand over the stone/gravel, before laying the stone. You need a smooth, flat, even surface that will adjust as you set them in place. If you don't use the sand but just go over the gravel, any imperfections in the ground, highs/lows or even a stray high stone or two will stress the paver when you put weight on it. The sand will allow you to adjust the height of each paver if they are not exactly all identical.

The vibrator is an excellent piece of advice.

 

[garacuda]

More excellent advice! I'm slow getting this thing going as I decided to add a 3,000 lb winch to my boom pole to make placing these mammer jammers a little more precise. I do have the ability to cut them and will be staggering the joints. I got two in place across one end for my first "row" and will stagger from there. Butting them up in the long length (8' butting up to a 10' er) proved to be tricky. I have to leave room to remove my strap and when I tried to push the one up next to the other............you guessed it,....I pushed a bunch of sand up between the pavers and the displaced sand made the second paver un-level. After sleeping on it I decided to place the adjoining paver with one edge up on top of the one already in place (still can remove straps) and push it off the edge and just let it "drop into place".

In theory this should work better, rains have delayed my next attempt. That conduit idea is great Dutch445, I can see that helping me in leveling AND screeding smooth. I had it smooth the first time, but it wasn't level. I'm attempting to place the sand just ahead of each paver so I don't have to drive across it to place them. I've got about 7' of boom that seems to be working okay so far. I took a photo of my first lift, but have gone on to lift 3-4 of those pavers off of the trailer with it. It's not pretty, but it works good.

I will be taking more photos when I get back to laying pavers (hopefully this afternoon).

Thanks again!

 

[Dutch445]

how much do they weigh? any chance you can borrow a set of pallet forks for your loader?
it might allow you to lift them by putting the forks into those recesses in the bottom
of the concrete.then you can put them right in place and just back out from under
with the forks.

 

[garacuda]

how much do they weigh? any chance you can borrow a set of pallet forks for your loader?
it might allow you to lift them by putting the forks into those recesses in the bottom
of the concrete.then you can put them right in place and just back out from under
with the forks.

I wish I knew where to borrow a set of forks. That's how I load them on my trailer here at the shop, using a Pettibone with a 44' extended boom. Now if I just had that baby at the house for a few days............! Might leave a rut or two in the yard, but man it would be worth it for sure. I might just check out CL again, have had good luck there before......... What should a set of used forks go for? I'm guessing they make some that set down over a bucket? I can't justify buying new at this time. The Pettibone is used here daily and it's a pretty good core to haul it home for a weekend.

 

[Dutch445]

the new JD forks run over $900,
other brands can be had for less
palletforks.com is one such supplier

used usually 1/2 the price of new

 

[garacuda]

Update on my slow progress; Working on this alone is very slow. It's seldom worth getting things out to start during the week by the time I get home from work. I did get wifey poo to help me 1/2 a day last Sunday, mostly holding the load steady as I traveled from the trailer to the "landing zone" for each paver. It did speed things up a bit. I finally got around to cutting some to fit at the edges and these babies are very heavily reinforced! Here's a photo of my progress, a cut paver and the next load I'm going to try to get set in place over the weekend.

I'm anxious to try the vibrator on them after I get them all in place. Some are a bit high and low and I hope it will settle them down to a bit more level. Since I have to rent the thing I only want to do it once. So far the advice I got here has worked out pretty good.

My winch on boom pole is working pretty well too..................(I'm still looking around for some affordable forks though)

 

[Bengineer]

I'm a little late to this thread given the progress you've already made. I think you might get the pavers to set more even if your gravel sub-base is smooth and packed to -1" of your grade, then screed off about an inch of fines / gravel dust on top so you have a level, smooth surface with a bit of give. The typical build-up for setting brick or pavers in sand is 4-6" of sub base packed, then setting on 1" of sand/fines screeded off smooth, then tapping the brick in place and finally vibrating the whole shebang with sand on top, which fills in the cracks, locking the whole surface together.

I'm not sure how much a small vibrating plate tamper will move your mondo pavers. Maybe one of the larger plate tampers would work.