Beautiful Patios & Garden Paving in Gloucestershire

What goes into a patio that lasts

A patio is a small piece of groundwork with a nice surface on top. The slabs are what you look at, but the load-bearing patio sub-base underneath, the falls, and the mortar bed are what decide whether it is still flat and quiet under your feet in ten years. It is the same principle we build our block paving driveways on, scaled to what a garden has to carry rather than a car.

LayPave designs and builds patios and garden paving that turn a tired back garden into a proper outdoor living space. Choose from porcelain paving slabs, natural Indian sandstone and other quality slabs, laid on a full mortar bed over a solid sub-base with correct drainage falls so your patio stays flat and free-draining for years.

Fully insured and guaranteed, with no upfront payment.

What’s included

• Lifting and removing the old patio, concrete or turf
• A compacted sub-base sized for the use the area will get
• Drainage falls set away from the house and clear of the damp course
• A full wet mortar bed under every slab, no spot bedding
• SBR bonding agent in the mix and a slurry primer on the back of porcelain
• Polymer mortar jointing, pointed and cleaned off properly
• Steps, retaining edges and brick walls where the design calls for them

Slab choice, plainly

Porcelain is dense, frost resistant and almost non-porous. It does not fade, moss struggles to get a grip on it, and most ranges carry a non-slip R11 rating. It comes in large formats with a factory-consistent size, which is what gives that tight, modern joint line. The trade-off is preparation: porcelain will not bond to mortar on its own, so the back of every slab gets a slurry primer before it goes down. Skip that step and the slabs come loose. Plenty do.

Indian sandstone is warmer in tone, varies from slab to slab, and suits older houses and cottage gardens. It is more porous, so it wants sealing in a shaded spot and a wash once a year, but it is kinder on the budget and it ages well.

Other natural stone such as limestone or granite sits between the two. We bring samples to the survey so you can see them against your brickwork rather than guessing off a screen.

How we build it

Old surface up first, and it usually tells us something. Cracked concrete over soft fill, or a patio that was laid straight onto soil, explains why the levels moved. Then the sub-base goes in and gets compacted, at a depth matched to what the patio will carry, and the falls are set to move water away from the house and towards a border, a channel or a soakaway.

Slabs are laid on a full wet mortar bed with an SBR bonding agent in the mix, each one levelled individually and tapped down to the string line. Cuts around downpipes, manholes and steps are done properly rather than filled with a wedge. Joints are finished with polymer mortar jointing, which stays flexible, resists weeds and does not wash out the way a dry brushed-in mix does.

Where the garden drops away, we build retaining edges or brick steps to hold the level. Doing that as part of the same job means the coursing and the finished heights work with the patio rather than against it. Plenty of customers have the patio done at the same time as a new resin driveway at the front, which saves a second mobilisation and keeps the materials talking to each other.

Getting the most out of the space

Think about how you actually use the garden before settling on a shape. A patio sized around a table and six chairs needs more room than people expect, roughly 3.5 by 3.5 metres before anyone can push a chair back. A second smaller area at the far end catching the evening sun is often better value than one enormous slab of paving by the back door.

Border planting softens the edge, a step down to the lawn stops the patio feeling like a raft, and running the same slab through to a path keeps the garden reading as one space. We will sketch options at the survey. There is no charge and no obligation, and if we think a smaller patio would suit the garden better, we will say so.