Hey Glenn, I recently finished a patio behind our house. I didn't use flagstone, I used a product called a Walkmaker by Quikrete, basically a mold you fill with concrete to get a random stone pattern, but the end result is wide joints similar to what you'll have between your flagstones. I found a product called Envirostone made by Envirobond. (www.envirobond.com) It's similar to the "stabilizing" sands you've seen, but is specifically made for flagstone joints. It is a mixture of a fine sand, aggregate, and their "stabilizer".

It's been raining here everyday since I put the Envirostone down and swept it in to the joints, so I still don't know exactly how hard it sets up, but it is very tightly packed in from the rain and isn't running off at all. I imagine once it dries it will not blow away.

I did fill my joints about 50% with pea gravel before adding the Envirostone to keep costs down. The Envirostone was $12.50 a bag locally, and I needed 4 bags of it for my 225 sq. ft patio. I also used 5 bags of pea gravel.

They have 2 colors of Envirostone, I used the "natural", sort of tan/beige when dry.

Here are a couple of pics of the finished patio.

Good luck!

http://img201.echo.cx/my.php?image=patiodone10lm.jpg
http://img141.echo.cx/my.php?image=patiodone31xz.jpg

Looks good right now... hope it holds well.
Do you know if the Envirostone is available at the box stores (Lowes, Home Depot, etc)?
What did you do for a base?

Glenn, the Envirostone isn't carried by Lowes or HD. I was able to get it at a local cement/stone supplier. This was more of a pro/contractor type of place that also sold small quantities to the public.

The cool thing about the Envirostone is it becomes workable again when saturated with water. If for some reason you needed to reset a stone you could soak the joints and remove the stone to add or remove material underneath it.

I didn't do anything special for the base. The molds were poured onto compacted soil. I don't intend for this to be permenant. We'd like to do a slate or multi-colored stone of some sort in the future. If I get 3 years of use out of it I'll be happy. Curious to see how the winter treats it! :-O

Sounds to me like you need to set your flags on a full mortar bed.
This was how tile was done before things like thinset and bonding mortar.
More labor intensive, better results.

Blip01-

How did you get the different colors in your walkmaker mold? Your patio looks great!

Thanks..

Real easy SLOdown, just mix up your primary color and fill the Walkmaker mold leaving a few random "stones" in each mold empty. Later on you can mix the second color place the mold back over the previously poured "stones" and fill the empty spaces with the new color. Make sure you rinse the mold off each time you move it to do the second color, otherwise you'll have the second color all over the tops of your previously poured "stones".

Here's a pic of the patio complete with furniture, plants, and grill.

Here is a link that might be useful: {{gwi:287090}}

I have a question concerning mortering flagstone.
We recently put flag stone on our patio, we didn't use sand, we used crushed granite as we were told that the granit would harden if we water it every couple of days for a week, well it didn't....
The dog keeps digging up the crushed granite and the kids are constantly bringing the dirt in the house, it's a total mess, we are so dissapointed, as we were going for the natural look. We started putting mortar to keep the mess to a minimum, which kinda ruined the natural look.
Any ideas on how to get all the mortar of the flagstones without ruining them?

At the end (toward the street) of my long, thin garden is a messy, sloppily done piece of cement. It is less than a yard long and uneven (not a perfect square). Someone probably put it there over a century ago. We can't put enough soil on top of it to grow anything. There is mulch on top of it to cover it up as it is rather ugly. I was thinking of putting something in that corner to cover it up. Any suggestions? Maybe flagstones on top of the mulch. Would it make sense to use cement with the flagstones on such a small area?
Thanks.

Hi Pam,

Can you determine how thick the cement is? There's a possibility that it was put in place to cover an old well or something like that, but whatever the reason, if it's not too thick you should be able to either move it in one piece or break it up and remove it. I mentioned the well possibility so you would be careful and not fall in while trying to remove the cement, if that's the case. If you remove it and find that it is covering a well or something similar you should be able to dig out and put a new cover over it at a lower level, allowing enough soil cover to grow grass, etc.
If you dont' want to go to the trouble to remove it would it work to put a bench and a couple of container plants in that area?

About ten years ago we put down a flagstone patio. I've never been completely happy with it because they scrimped on the number of stones and I thought they were too far apart. Also, the gravel used between the stones hurt my feet when occasionally walking barefoot. We are now having it redone. I am scared! I asked the contractor to set the flagstones as close together as possible. When I got home they were set in concrete with three to five inches of morter between stones. He said it had to be that way because he needed that much morter to support the stones. Also the new stones are much lighter. The contractor told me this is because my stones had been there for so long and had aged. But instead of mixing new stones with old...He put all the old stones down and now adding the new. He says with time they will match. I'm worried about how long. I am also worried that with so much concrete I will lose the natural feel of my back yard (We have no grass..only flagstone and raised beds.)I've been reading and wondered if we shouldn't have gone with sand rather than morter. Also I've read that when flagstone is installed this way, the concrete will crack and crumble within a couple of years.