Road plates - products that are increasingly being used for the construction of temporary and permanent roads. If it is necessary to equip a suburban village, a similar problem is best solved with the help of those funds that are rarely used in megacities. In the summer cottage, people use paving slabs, natural stone and other building materials, but in a small town, sidewalks are more profitable to make from road slabs. However, this product is also often used if, for example, it is necessary to equip a temporary entrance to a building object. The article will describe the technological work on laying road slabs.
General information
The weight of the road slab, as a rule, does not exceed 2.2 tons, and the thickness is approximately 200 mm. If you need to determine the permissible load that a reinforced concrete product can withstand, you need to know the brand of concrete from which it was made. The main advantage of a road slab is that it has excellent technical data. In addition, working with this product is convenient.
Such plates can be dismantled if necessary, therefore they are allowed to be reused. However, it is important to know: when storing them, the permissible height of the folded plates should be no more than two meters, and between the rows it is necessary to do a wooden shift.
Application area
Low cost, easy installation and easy replacement in case of damage are the advantages due to which the laying of road plates is increasingly being made. Road slabs are used for arranging various territories, namely:
- garden paths;
- walking paths;
- roads and parking lots;
- recreational areas;
- country roads.
Principles of Industrial Production
Why are road plates so popular in the construction industry? The main reason is that they are easy to manufacture under industrial conditions. The manufacturer of building materials does not require technological and expensive equipment, so the cost of the product is low. The manufacturing process of road slabs consists of such sequential work:
- Preparation and cleaning of the metal mold, which subsequently must be poured with concrete mortar. The iron surface is pretreated with various anticorrosive solutions.
- Two rows of reinforcing mesh are mounted, which is fixed at a certain distance from each other.
- Pouring concrete into a metal mold.
- Leveling and vibrating concrete mortar to remove voids and increase the technical parameters of the finished slab.
- Loading the mold into a special chamber in which the mixture must gain the necessary strength under the influence of high temperatures.
- Removing the finished product. Specialists should check it for compliance with quality standards.
- The final step is marking the plate.
As a result, finished products are moved to a warehouse where they will be stored until sale. According to SNiP, laying of road slabs should be carried out only on the prepared site.
The main stage is the organization of the foundation
To avoid various operational problems, the technology for laying road slabs begins with soil preparation. The topsoil must be removed, and after the resulting surface must be carefully leveled and compacted. A base with a depth of approximately 300 mm is recommended. It is important to know: in clay areas and in the lowlands, this figure should be more than 500 mm.
The next step is to lay the bottom of the base with geotextiles. This is a high-quality and effective drainage material that protects the product from leaching. To form the so-called pillow, you need to make a 50 mm layer of crushed stone. However, if car parking is being constructed from road slabs, the thickness of this layer should be 100 mm.
Sand is another important element when laying road slabs, so it is recommended to use quarry material: it is easier to compact, and it also has low fluidity. A layer of sand, the thickness of which should be 100 mm, must be laid on top of the gravel. To increase the strength of the base, it is necessary to water the prepared "pillow" with water.
To compact the prepared soil, a vibrating plate can be used. Rainwater discharge is another technological nuance that should be taken into account when designing, so it is important to make a slope so that precipitation does not destroy the concrete structure. In conclusion, it is necessary to organize a fence made of curbs.
Reinforced concrete slabs
Small tracks perform several important functions, namely:
- Provide high-quality communication between buildings and various parts of the residential area.
- They play the role of an additional element of the household territory.
However, these products are not intended for too complex landscape compositions. The paths can be made straight and functional, but, as a rule, on the site they will look ugly. Therefore, it is recommended that you carefully consider their exact layout before starting to lay the road slabs.
An important point is the permissible dimensions of the products, since the width must be chosen so that it is convenient to move along them. As a rule, for pedestrian paths this parameter is about 800 mm, but for smaller paths, narrower structures can be used. If it is necessary to equip a car entrance, the width of the slab should be approximately 2.5 meters.
You should know that the cost of work is calculated in the estimate for laying road slabs. This document takes into account the entire technological process of the construction task.
The plate can be laid both with the “dry” method and with the “wet” one. The essence of the first option is to fit the products as close as possible to each other, and then fill up a small gap with sand and pour water to achieve compaction. But the so-called wet method involves the use of a cement-sand mixture, with which it is necessary to fix the slabs on the prepared base.
For the driveway, reinforced concrete products will have to be fixed to each other using electric welding. For these purposes, special metal loops should be provided on the plates.
Cost of work
People often ask themselves what is the price of laying road slabs in Moscow. To get an accurate answer, first you need to call a specialist at a construction site. The stability of the soil, the depth of leveling the site and the degree of strengthening of the foundation - these are the nuances that affect the financial side of the work. As a rule, various construction companies charge about 700 rubles per 1 m².
Conclusion
Laying road slabs is a fairly simple job, but it is simply impossible to do the whole process with your own hands. In any case, you will have to call a special technique with which the products can be mounted on a prepared base. However, the initial work on the preparation of the soil can be carried out independently. The article described the key points of the device of road slabs.