Patio advice

[Layla27]

Hello, this is my first post so please be kind! I am looking for some advice on a patio I had laid around 6 months ago. For some back story: I was very heavily pregnant when the job was finished and didn’t give it much of a thorough look over but looked fine at the time and trusted my husband’s judgement on the job (he was happy with it but doesn’t have great attention to detail!) 6 months down the line and I am starting to spend some time in the garden and obviously paying more attention to the patio and I just keep seeing things that are driving my crazy and I would just like some advice as to whether these things are normal (what you would reasonably expect when having a patio laid) or if any of these things are down to a poor job?

First of all the pointing keeps crumbling away, especially when it rains. Eg yesterday it was raining most of the day and windy too so we ended up with grains of pointing over the patio. If I rub my finger along the pointing then grains come off.

The more I have looked into it it seems to be in places where the pointing is particularly wide, as there is quite a lot of variation. Eg some bits almost twice as wide as the narrower bits. Worst example of this is annoyingly right in the centre of the patio where it looks really unbalanced (I will post a picture below - this is the part that drives me crazy as it’s all my eye is drawn to!).

When it does rain, around the wider sections of pointing damp stains appear for a while and takes a good few hours to dry. So I am again wondering if this is related at all.

I am aware that we are 6 months down the line now and I should have said when the job was completed if I was unhappy with it, so I was wondering if anyone thinks there is anything wrong with the job that has been done what the best option is for me now to get it corrected? It is driving me crazy looking at it at the moment! Or am I overreacting and this is completely normal?

Many thanks in advance for any advice. For reference, the slabs are grey Indian sawn sandstone and I believe the pointing was done with easyjoint.

images:


https://ibb.co/Bg2Nvj7
https://ibb.co/3fRNZkX


https://ibb.co/CWzcCrg
https://ibb.co/GRprGXL

 

[goldeagle]

Getting completely equal joints with that type of paving is almost impossible, but it should be possible to do a better job than that of balancing the joints so that it is barely noticeable. However, I don't think you've got grounds to go back to your contractor on joint sizes given it's been 6 months since the work was complete. There's a few joints that particularly stand out - I've seen better, but have also seen worse.

You could possibly speak to your contractor about the pointing as you wouldn't expect it to be crumbling after just 6 months, at least see what he has to say about it. To be honest I would avoid using the 1-part brush in mortars like easyjoint as they tend to not be particularly hardwearing. Worst case if you really wanted it should be easy enough to rake out the pointing and re-point with something else

 

[Layla27]

@goldeagle thank you for your reply. Since posting this I tested some of the slabs to see if they sounded hollow at all, and whilst doing this found a few were and unfortunately one is actually loose (wobbles when I touch it and I could easily pull it up if I wanted to). So we are going to get him back to look at this and the crumbling easyjoint and see what he says.