How long does it take to point a patio?

There’re probably a hundred techniques to point a patio, some of them are much easier and faster and some requires time. Even on top of that, some people just take their own time to do everything properly so, it can require way more time than you may have thought.

Everyone has their own way of doing things, the same applies in the case of pointing a patio. For instance, pointing a 20 square meter patio with a random pattern using a brush-in jointing compound is an hour’s work, tops. Some may even do it in 20 minutes while some may take more than an hour.

So it’s almost impossible to tell exactly how long will it take to point a patio or how many square meters can be pointed in an hour or day. Let’s look at the variables that determine the time required to point a patio.

Patio & Paver Size

Of course, how long will it take to point a patio depends on its size. A 50 square meter patio will take more time to point than a 20 square meter not taking other factors into account. Nothing to talk much about, it’ll be a little bit of a silly point to include, but yeah!

Obviously, the smaller the slabs, the more the joints are to point compared to a patio that’s made from larger slabs. Also, the random patio patterns with different size slabs will end up taking more time as there are more joints to point.

Patio Surface Type

Patio surfaces can be either porous like sandstone, for example, or non-porous like porcelain. If you’re not aware of these types of patio surfaces, let me quickly explain what they’re and how they’re different from each other.

Porous patio surfaces simply mean that they consist of pores so the water or air can pass through the face of the slabs to its bottom or vice versa whereas the non-porous patio surfaces are denser hence it’s not possible for water or air to easily pass through them. This means that porous patio surfaces are also much easier to get stained as things pass through them and get into the depth than non-porous patio surfaces.

How the patio surface type that’s either porous or non-porous can affect the time required to point that patio? As porous patio surfaces are easily stainable, the pointing material like traditional mortar made with sand and cement can also easily stain the surface when pointing the joints. The stains can appear on the edges of the pavers or slabs when they suck in the pointing material while filling the joints.

Hence, when pointing porous patio surfaces and especially with the traditional mortar, more care has to be taken like pointing the patio in smaller sections and going back quickly to clean the excess to avoid the stains instead of pointing the whole patio at once and cleaning off the excess which way end up taking more time in pointing the patio.

Pointing Material & Method

Some people prefer traditional sand and cement mix for pointing and some only point the patios with ready-mix compounds like EasyJoint. Either of them works fine, I’m not an expert to advise you to use this or that but I can tell how the pointing materials that you’re using to point the patio can increase or decrease the pointing time.

Pointing with ready-mix compounds like EasyJoint can be a lot more quicker you can empty the whole tub at once and just brush it in the joints of the patio compared to pointing with traditional mortar using a trowel and going joint by joint.

For example, to point a 50 square meter patio, with brush-in compounds like EasyJoint can take one or two hours maximum whereas, with traditional sand and cement mortar it can take even more than a day.

You can watch the video below from Marshalls to get an idea about how easy the brush-in jointing compounds are to apply and how you can end up saving a lot of time using them.

As I said in the beginning, there are a hundred techniques to point a patio, some are faster and some takes time, and also it depends on who is pointing it. Some people take longer to point the patio the best as they could do without thinking about the time. Some people compress the mortar or grout while some of them don’t.

Also, some people wait for the mortar or grout to dry a little bit and then go over it again and point in more if necessary. Instead of using trowels to fill in the joints, some people use pointing guns which can really speed the process if you have the hang of it.

Weather

If using sand and cement mortar for pointing, the patio can’t be pointed in the rain and pointing work will be delayed. However, with brush-in pointing compounds like EasyJoint, you can point the patio in the rain.