New patio and new lawn

[Launchbury]

I'm going to lay a new patio and at the same time replace our existing lawn (which is 90% weeds).

I've used a micro digger in the past and thought I'd get one in to dig the footings for the patio.

Surely I could scrape the lawn up with the digger, if I'm careful, Is this advisable?

Would I then need to rotivate before I lay a new lawn?

Many thanks.

 

[r896neo]

unless you are very good in a digger scraping the turf off as you suggest is very difficult to do well. You will end up taking out masses more material than is needed and paying for getting rid of it.

A turf cutter is a much more suitable tool and will do a lovely clean job. Then simple add sand if you need to improve drainage or compost if your soil drains too quickly then rotovate it all.

To be honest the same is true of the grading when digging the patio out. Unless the area is more than 25m/sq or you have health trouble of any sort then doing it by hand is cheaper because you remove less as said before.

So maybe 120 quid for digger hire and transport and then an extra 30-50 quid for the larger skip.? another 2 tons of hardcore to fill the extra depth back up etc etc. It can add up.

But diggers are fun for many people and its a good excuse to have a go if your keen.

 

[Launchbury]

Fantastic advice, thank you.

 

[Launchbury]

The patio will be about 25 sqm, do you think me an a mate will be able to dig it out in a day? It's only a short run round the side of the house to the skip at the front.

Thank you.

 

[r896neo]

Yes a good hard days work will comfortably see it done if there are 2 of you. The quickest way is often to have one man loosening and the other shovelling into a barrow.

Use the pick in at a very shallow angle almost parallel to the ground to loosen it up then use a longtail shovel and put your knee/thigh behind the shaft to push it into the ground.

If you try and simply jab it in you'll wreck your wrists by the end of the day.