Hi,
I am replacing a patio in the back of my house. I need to excavate down a foot and then add gravel, landscape fabric, stone dust, then flagstone. I was NOT going to put sand in between the flagstone, but put the flagstone close together.
My question: between the stone dust and flagstone should I put another layer of landscape fabric? My thought is that it would keep the weeds down. Is it overkill? I’m trying to avoid having to weed (or treat) about a zillion miles of seams where the flagstone meet. Getting old and fat and bending down is tough!
Any thougths? JOE
Replies
The lower layer of fabvric should work. If you add a second layer, what's to keep the flagstone from shifting around? I would think you would want the exposed stone dust to be able to squish around the underside of the flagstone and fill all the crevices.
"Put your creed in your deed." Emerson
"When asked if you can do something, tell'em "Why certainly I can", then get busy and find a way to do it." T. Roosevelt
One other thought I had was to put the stones very close together with less than 1/16" separating them and not use stone dust or sand in between them. Would that work?
1/16" is tight, even for ceramic tile work. No reason it won't work, as long as yopur stones are dimensionally correct. What happens if a stone is 1/4" bigger than the others?"Put your creed in your deed." Emerson
"When asked if you can do something, tell'em "Why certainly I can", then get busy and find a way to do it." T. Roosevelt
Close spacing will help, if these are "regular" stones (I always picture flagstones as irregular--just me).
A jug of the pre-mix Roundup with the ready-to-go sprayer will run you under $20, and will generally zap any weedseed that blows onto the patio later (which will likely be the mechanism for weeds, not "grow through" so much).Occupational hazard of my occupation not being around (sorry Bubba)
If you don't fill the cracks nature will, or bread crumbs, or bits of fried chicken, or . . .
Fill the cracks and look into some of those sand sealer products. They are supposed to stablize the sand, keep in the joints and not moving around, and secondly make it less habitable for weeds.