Patio Tiles – Find Out More About Base Patio Tiles

When choosing outdoor tiles for your patio, consider the style of your house. A tile patio may suit a formal house, whereas flagstones have a more informal look. Are you looking for patio tiles?

A patio is only as durable as its base. The simplest, most flexible base consists of sand alone or sand over gravel. However, in areas prone to frost, sand-bedded paving units are vulnerable to frost heave. This means the rising of soil or other surface materials because of water expanding at freezing temperatures. It would then require you to make adjustments to the patio each spring. On the other hand, laying the pavers in a wet mortar over a concrete slab provides the greatest durability. But this is costly and time-consuming. Another option, however, combines the convenience of sand bedding with some permanence of wet-mortar. In the dry-mortar method, paving units are laid on a base of gravel topped by a layer of dry-mix mortar. Joints between the pavers are filled with more dry mix, then the surface is wetted to set the mortar.

Planning Your Patio Tiles

How can you plan to tile a patio? Sketch a plan on graph paper. Allow about 1.2 cm for joints between pavers. For a border of plants between the house and patio, allow at least 45 cm.
To ensure proper drainage, slope the patio away from the house. To do this on a flat site, outline the patio tiles with a mason’s line tied to stakes, hang a line level on the strings, and adjust the strings until they are level. Then lower the strings on the outer stakes by 0.6 cm per 30 cm of width. Thus the outer edge of a 3.6 metre patio would be 7.2 cm lower than the edge near the house.

If your patio tiles slope sharply away from the house, you may have to add fill and a retaining wall.

That’s great advice in just a few minutes. Still need more info? Talk to us at Tile Factory Outlet.  We have friendly and knowledgeable staff on hand ready to help you. Additionally, Tile Factory Outlet has a great range of quality tiles at amazingly low prices. So visit us in our Tile Factory Outlet showroom or compare and buy tiles from the TFO online tile store.