Mark Fuss: Hi I am Mark Fuss. I'm the Vice President of Sales and Marketing for Nicolock Paving Stones and Retaining Walls. In this segment, we're going to talk to you about the installation of the base material and the compaction. This is the most important step of your installation, like any building project it's only as good as the base that it sits on.

You're going to use three quarter inch modified stone or crushed concrete for the base material, which means you've pieces that are three quarter inch in diameter down to the very fine material needed to get good compaction of the base. Spread the material down no more than 4 inches at a time and compact it with a vibrating plate compactor, so it's good and hard almost as firm as concrete would be.

The finished grade of that base needs to follow the finished contour of the final pavement and be 3-4 inches below the finished surface depending upon the thickness of the paving stone that you're going to be using. Take two 1-inch diameter pipes and lay them down on the compacted aggregate base parallel.

Spread sand evenly between the two pipes and then using a screed board drag it over the surface to create a smooth, even layer of sand for your setting bed. Remove the pipes and fill in any depressions with additional sand.

Now that we've talked about the installation of the base material and the sand setting bed, we're going to move on to the next step which is the actual installation of the paving stones.