Mortars and concrete are the fundamental components of much of the construction industry in Britain and Ireland. This page looks at the mortars and concretes most commonly used within the paving, drainage and hard-landscaping trades.

Whatever form of modular paving is being laid, it will more than likely be laid onto a 'bed', a laying course of fine material that can be shaped and levelled to provide the ideal support for the individual paving units.

Permeable bedding mortars are becoming the material of choice for construction of high-quality, durable and low-maintenance paving. Using quality products from leading supplier SteinTec Tuffbau, this page looks at how we use them and the benefits they bring to modern paving.

We are becoming increasingly aware that quality pavements rely on quality mortars and primers. This page looks at their use on a simple residential patio, following a first-timer user of Steintec Bedding, Priming and Jointing mortars.

How useful is the one-brand-does-it-all FUGA PAVE System of Bedding, Primer and Jointing for paving installation? What are the advantages, and is it really as simple as it's claimed?

Standardised prescribed concretes are, essentially, recipes used to create concretes with pre-defined qualities, such as compressive strength or abrasion resistance. This page goes through the more commonly used 'recipes' and explains how the various components are defined.

Designated Concrete Mixes are recipes used to prepare concretes that can be used to perform particular functions within the civil engineering industry. The aim is to simplify specification, and this page looks at the most regularly specified examples.

This page provides an explanation of the principle of slump as applied to concretes and mortars. Slump can be thought of, somewhat simplistically, as 'wetness'.

Grano is a fine-grained hard-wearing concrete. Think of it being an intermediate between a standard sand-cement mortar and a more familiar concrete based on a 10mm or 14mm coarse aggregate. This page looks at how it is prepared and how it is used in the paving and drainage trades.

Bond bridges, slurry primers, primers, bond coats - whatever term is used, it refers to a specialist coating applied to the underside of paving units to improve adhesion to the bedding and, in some cases, to give added protection to the paving against the migration of disfiguring salts and minerals. This page explains more.

Reference is repeatedly made throughout the site to some mystical material usually referred to as SBR, but little more is said about it. Just what is it and why is its use in mortars and concretes suggested so often?