How Long It Takes to Lay Block Paving? (with examples)
You’re going to have your beautiful block paved area laid by yourself or want a professional to do it for you, and want to know for long this entire process is going to last.
Whether you’re going to have a massive driveway across your property or a small block paved area in your garden every job varies widely, so it’s kind of hard to say how many square meters of block paving could you lay per hour or per day.
Most block paving jobs (around 100 square meters) usually take between 3-5 days with a team of two and the right equipment. But it varies widely because of factors like the size of the paving, weather, ground condition, access to the site, and more.
Factors that determine how long will it take for Block Paving
Here are all the factors that make it certainly impossible to come up with exactly how long it will take to do your block paving, however, will surely give you a rough idea about how long you can expect the job to last.
Size of the paving: Of course, the size of the paving to be laid is the biggest factor that determines how long the job is going to last. The bigger the area is, the longer it’s going to take irrespective of how many people are involved in the job.
Weather: Weather can totally ruin your days while preparing the area to lay block paving.
If you are a DIYer doing block paving yourself, see the DIYers Cheat Sheet for Block Paving here, there’s a lot more you need to know during the process to give paving a better chance for success and longevity.
Can you Block Pave in the Rain?
Most of the work that you need to lay block paving like excavation or digging, preparing the sub-base in the rain. You can even screed the sand and lay the pavers in the light rain but you’ll not be able to screed the sand if it’s raining heavily. It’s almost not possible to brush in kiln-dried sand into the block paving joints no matter how light or heavy the rain is.
After laying the pavers, it’s important that the joints are filled with kiln-dried sand or jointing sand, and to brush in the kiln-dried sand into the joints, the paving needs to be absolutely dry otherwise, the sand just won’t flow into the joints, and stick on the pavers. Thus, it is also not possible to sand block paving if it’s raining.
How soon after laying block paving can it rain or what happens if it rains after laying block paving?
It depends on if you have sealed the paving or not. If you’ve just swept the sand into the joints and not sealed yet, there’s no problem if it rains. But, if you seal the paving, then you need to give it a good 24-48 hours before it rains for the sealer to completely dry.
State of the ground & access to the site: Access to the site is a huge factor in this case. If you are not able to bring machinery like a digger to the site, it can take multiple hours with a shovel to dig out manually with your hands.
Also, if there’s already a concrete surface or existing block paving and you want to replace it, more time adds up to take out the existing pavers or dig through existing concrete.
Laying pattern & manhole: Block paving can be laid in various patterns. Some patterns are more complicated than others and hence, they’re harder on your back because they take longer.
Things like covering manholes involve proper cutting for a continuous look across the paving area which also has to do with time.
Other things: You’ve to check with legal processes like whether you need to install a soak-away system or not which also involves time.
Before digging, you need to check whether there is any utility or gas line running through the area and make sure you don’t dig through it. All these things that might seem small can end up taking a lot of time when combined.
How long it takes to lay 100m2 block paving?
It’s not how quick you can do it, it’s about being capable to do it properly with the team. Every job is different and also every team is different.
For example, a 4 people team can screed and lay 40-50 square meters a day. So, it should take around 2 days for them to screed and lay 100m2 of block paving. But there’re a lot of cuts to tackle with, the laying speed can drop to 30-40 square meters a day.
However, the same job for a team of 2 people could take up to 5 days for screeding and laying alone.
Usually, sealing isn’t carried out as soon as you lay the block paving. Normally, people wait a couple of months before sealing it with a sealer. Otherwise, it might have added up a day or two more for the job if you were to seal it right away after laying.