Tamper - Bunnings

[Rode Neagle]

Weare planning a small paving job out the front of our house. We have done lots of research and know that levelling and compacting the road base layer is super important as it will be going on loose sandy soil. I am wondering if anyone has any suggestions on how to best compact the road base? I'm not having much luck finding one of the mechanical compactors that you see on all the "how to" videos.

The father in law has suggested we buy a "tamper" like this -205mm-tamper_p0057896 but it looks like a huge amount of work with no guarantee that we would be able to get the road base level at the end.

Thanks for sharing your question about compacting road base for paving. Is there a reason you can't use a vibrating plate compactor? I'm sorry, but the store does not carry petrol or pneumatic vertical mechanical tampers. In the Bunnings video guide - How to prepare and lay a base for pavers they used a Large Compactor to flatten the road base.

The key to effectively using the vibrating plate compactor is to not stay in one place too long. Staying in one place causes the compactor to create a depression in the road base which now has to be filled. Using a vibrating plate compactor is adequate to flatten the road base.

Thanks so much for your advice, I have watched the "how to prepare and lay a base for pavers video" also but I haven't been able to find a plate compactor to hire or buy anywhere! I have tried the link to hire from Bunnings but it says that the "item is not available" at every store within 40km of me in Perth. Any thoughts as to why that might be?

Thanks for bringing the "Item not available" discrepancy to our attention. I'll pass the details on to our team to look into. I've just called Bunnings Melville, and they do hire the plate compactor from that location. Please give one of our helpful team members a call on (08) 9329 1300 to book your preferred hire time.

Is it possible to put pavers on top of a french drain to make a walkway (probably use the tuscan porcelain pavers) or would it prevent water from draining therefore, wasting my time even doing a french drain?

After I've dug the trench, put blue metal stones at bottom, lay ag pipe and burrito wrap it in geo fab. Do i back fill with the rest of the blue metal stones all the way up to surface level? What can I do in regards to landscaping on top of french drain/dirt surrounding it?

I hope this is making sense and I appreciate any help. Thank you, From someone who was out doing some light gardening and spontaneously decided to start a new project and now 1/4 of my yard is dug up

Awesome! thanks so much. I'm doing more of a stepping stone walkway like this bunnings tutorial How To Lay A Stepping Stone Pathway Bunnings Warehouse (youtube.com) but will probably be using bigger stones rather than pebbles. Is this the correct step after backfilling my trench with blue metal.

1. If you've got some geo fab left over after installing your french drain, it is definitely worth adding as it will help to keep weeds from growing through the stones. It's not 100% necessary but it's definitely worth doing as it will take very little time and will add a lot of value.

3. Yep, the tamper is perfect for this, but it may be a lot of work depending on the size of the area. If you had a large area, you might like to consider hiring a plate compactor to speed things up a bit.

4. It is not 100% necessary to use mortar, but it will make it much easier to level each individual paver. If you were concerned about mixing and laying mortar, you can use paver sand instead to achieve the same levelling effect, but it will not lock the pavers in place like mortar will.

5. The stones will help lock everything in place and give it that nice, finished look. There's a wide variety of decorative stones that you can use to finish everything off, so I'd suggest picking something that matches the style you are looking to achieve.

Understand the best option is probably to hire a compactor (such as -hire-small-compactor-24hr_p5470074), but this requires two people to put it into the boot yet I'm pretty much by myself. Also requires proper safety equipments and hopefully neighbours won't complain about the noise.

That is the best diy option.

A bit heavy to unload and load tho.

I managed to do it.

Compact sand on the soil.

Relevel the sand.

Lay pavers.

Cover pavers with fine sand.

Run whacker over pavers again.

Sweep/wash in remaining fine sand.

Watch out for plumbing in the area.

The foundations for the Great Wall of China and the Colosseum would have been done with hand tampers, but now the modern world has forgotten how things were done before machines were invented and most people these days would shudder at the thought of compacting a sizeable area by hand. They shy away from manual labour and prefer mechanical aids to do it for 'em.

You need to have a fair level of patience and determination but it can be done with a hand tamper and going about it the right way the same degree of compactness can be achieved. Some will say it can't, but it most definitely can be achieved. However, I would question the design and effectiveness, of the bunnings tamper.

IANAL (I am not a landscaper) but what I know as 'road base' is very rocky so the pavers don't bed into it as well , crusher dust or a layer of sand makes a much smoother surface for the pavers to sit in/on. If your road base is reasonably small gravel then it should compact smoothly, but spreading a 10mm layer of washed sand (levelled but not compacted) over it to bed the pavers probably wouldn't hurt

Different materials will need different depths mate.

Id grab a couple of shovels full of whatever material you're planning to use and compact it as a trial first.

Saying that though 10-15 mm over the 25mm would be right for most materials.

I don't see an issue with this. Keep you back straight and lift with your legs. If OP can't manage a simple 70kg lift, then he should reconsider his ability to move 30m2 of soil and laying pavers (let alone tampering everything by hand to a good standard).

The difference is that what you've linked is the item you want when you're compacting cohesive material like clay as it requires impact to compress. A plate compactor uses vibration to remove air from granular material.

That's just not true.

It is possible to do it by hand, just as well as mechanical. If you consider not merely the total force, but the pressure when you're using a much smaller hand tamper the pressure can be just as much as a mechanical one.

I know it can be done because I've done it, not merely paving but rammed earth walls.

Two weeks ago I was using a hand tamper at the Earth Building association conference. We built a wall with self supporting arch in rammed earth. This is rammed far more than is required for pavers. We used a variety of tools, pneumatic tamper, metal and timber hand tampers. The one I was most impressed with was a length of 90x45 pine with a steel angle bracket screwed on the end. That produced a result just as good as a pneumatic tamper.

Photos from this years conference will be available once I get mine to the organisers.

It will take care to get a smooth surface for paving, but a combination of careful tamping and screeding could give you a better surface than a mechanical compactor used by an amateur. They can do as much harm as good if you've not used one before.

The pavers I put down 20 years ago with hand compaction are just fine today.

The difference is that what you've linked is the item you want when you're compacting cohesive material like clay as it requires impact to compress.

I was just pointing out there's a tool like the manul hand tool, but more capable.

I totally agree with this. I have been on jobs where the vibration of the mechanical compactor has caused ground water to rise to the surface making the base material turn to jelly-like mud. The only alternative then is to dig the soggy material out and start again.

If you consider not merely the total force, but the pressure when you're using a much smaller hand tamper the pressure can be just as much as a mechanical one.

So you think a 10kg hand tamper produces the same forces and pressure as a 70kg mechanically vibrating plate?

They can do as much harm as good if you've not used one before.

What possible harm could it do? you can't over compact the base. Apart from taking 10x longer and having to tamp in thin layers the suggestion to use a hand tamper over a plate compactor just to save a few dollars is idiotic.

The only reason those plates vibrate is so they can compact, otherwise they would just sit on top of the sand and do nothing. With a hand tamper it's not necessary to get the same effect because vibration is not needed.

It is in fact true that hand tamping can compact material as tight as a vibrating plate, if not tighter. Vibrating plates can only compact to a certain degree and only in fairly thin layers at a time. This is why on road repairs they use Jumping Jacks to compact the road base material, once done they seal with Bitumen and use a vibrating plate to compact that because the Bitumen is only a thin layer on top.

Salisbury Cathedral is an enormous church in England built in the 13th century. Built of stone it sits entirely on gravel foundations, I'll just repeat that, "gravel foundations". It's not hard to realise that a fairly solid degree of compactness would be needed for the gravel to support such a massive weight as the stone walls of a cathedral, yet they didn't have vibrating machines back then. A whole bunch of labourers would have been used to hand tamp the gravel layer by layer. Hand tamping was used all over the world for building and road construction for a couple of thousand years and new methods only began to come in with the introduction of steam power.

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