Written By: Nick Kossick, Hebron Brick – West Fargo Store
How To Install
This patio started out as a concrete slab and I went over the top of it with 24″ x 24″ porcelain panels from MSI Stone, the color is Mystique Multicolor. These panels are a great product for an overlay because they are only 3/4″ thick, but they can also be used as a regular landscape product placed on a class 5 base.
First I took a look at how the panels would lay out over the top of the concrete. I noticed there would be one row of smaller cut pieces so I started at the furthest corner from the house with full pieces so that the cut pieces would all be up against the house.
For a project like this there are two ways to adhere the panels, you can use a landscape adhesive that we sell from SRW or you could bed them in mortar. The adhesive will definitely be the easier route for a typical homeowner, as all you would need is the adhesive and a caulking gun.
When adhering the panels, I made sure that the adhesive lines ran with the slope of the concrete. The reason for doing so is because water might still get through the joints and if that happens you want the water to be able to run freely with the grade (illustration attached). I used 3/8″ spacers to keep the same distance between all the panels.
Since the panels are going over concrete and the concrete likely won’t be perfect everywhere, you may need to do some shimming if you notice any panels “rocking”, I would dry lay each panel before putting the adhesive down to check, however there are two types of adhesive from SRW, the other one is called “Vertical Lock” and is very thick compared to the much thinner regular adhesive and you may not need to shim if you use Vertical Lock, it is about twice the cost though.
I also would dry lay about 10 pieces at a time to make sure I had a good variation of color/pattern, but that is dependent on which color you pick and Mystique Multicolor has probably the most variation of all of them.
