Video:How to Lay a Flagstone Patio
with Eric KingFlagstone patios are really popular and can be done in a number of different ways to suit your home and landscape. This About.com video will explain the steps for laying a flagstone patio.See Transcript
Transcript:How to Lay a Flagstone Patio
Hi, I'm Eric King, a registered landscape architect with About.com, and we're going to learn about how to lay a flagstone patio.
Laying a Flagstone Patio: Step One
There are three main steps to laying a flagstone patio whether its dry-laid or wet-laid. The first step is preparing the base. That's digging your footing or your slab. You want to make sure you have a level part of your yard to work in, or if it's sloped, you might have to cut and move dirt around.
Laying a Flagstone Patio: Step Two
The next step is going to be building the base material itself, whether it's a concrete slab or it could be a crushed stone. If it's a wet-laid patio, that's going to be a concrete base usually around four inches of a poured slab that will become the permanent structure where you mortar the flagstone. If it's a dry-laid patio, that's the one with the granular product, then you would use crushed stone or gravel or a granular product that you can put in and tamp and compact it in place, and that is the middle, the stabilizing product on which the stone rests. So that's the second of the two steps.
Laying a Flagstone Patio: Step Three
The third step is what we call laying the stone. That's where you actually get the individual pieces of stone out and make them fit like a jigsaw. Now, remember, flagstone can be irregular, all different shapes, or it can be cut in squares or rectangles. Whichever one you choose, you still want to make sure that they all fit together in a beautiful pattern. Sometimes you'll have to cut the stone to make it fit. And you can do that with a chisel and a hammer. The great thing about the flagstone is that it's easy to mark a line on it with a pencil or sharp object. Take a chisel and a hammer and score it back and forth on both sides, and then it'll break fairly true. That's what makes it a good project for a do-it-yourselfer, especially the dry laid.
I'm Eric King with About.com and that is how to lay a flagstone patio. For more information, visit About.com.