Raising a patio...and chickens!

Hi,

I need to raise my patio (I have to hose it down often due to my new free range chickens) but the water slopes towards the house and the drain is higher than the slabs. What should I use to lay the slabs on after I have removed them to re-use. It needs to be raised about 2".
Many thanks for any help.

all slabs and patios should have a slight fall away from a property so water runs away from your house foundations!

I would lift the slabs and then put down a suitable hard core base such as MOT1, compact this and then relay the slabs on a bed of mortar to give you a slight fall away from the property.

Then I would cook up a good stock and make a nice chicken stew

hmmmm, thanks for that Woodster....I'll ignore the last bit!

Why is the patio running back to the house and is it a linear drain that's too high? If so, you could probably get away with removing the first course of paving and dropping the drain down. If not, you could always install a linear drain to take the water.

If you do need to lift and re-lay all of the paving 2 inches higher, just be careful of your damp course, you need the finished paving height to be 150mm below it.

Of course, without seeing the patio and drain it's difficult to offer sound advice and the best solution