Limestone subbase turned to sludge!!!

[Richard wallwin]

So I’ve been doing a patio over lock down, excavated down 150mm below dpc, and imported 40mm crusher run compacted in lifts of around 50-60mm at a time to get me up to 100mm compacted sub base depth. Now I’ve laid about 70% of the paving while the weathers been nice and the lime stone was hard has rock but we’ve had some massive down pours over night and it’s turned to jelly where the limestones still exposed, my question is why has this happened when it was firm and your spade would bounce off if you tried to dig through it, have I over compacted, under compacted, should I have used 20mm instead? 
 

id like to add that the paving is rock solid there’s no movement in them, the ground is heavy clay 

 

 

[Mr Punter]

If the stone has a lot of small powdery fines these can turn to slurry when wet but the larger stone should hold together well.

 

If your underlying soil is shrinkable clay it can change a lot depending on moisture content but should be fine when your paving is down.

[Richard wallwin]

There were a lot of fines in it so probably that then, now it’s dry it’s set rock hard again. Thank you for the reply ?

[Ferdinand]

9 hours ago, Richard wallwin said:

There were a lot of fines in it so probably that then, now it’s dry it’s set rock hard again. Thank you for the reply ?

 

If you put up a sign saying "Cycle Trail" the Council will  leave it entirely alone ? . That subbase sounds like quite a lot of our routes.

Edited July 3, 2020 by Ferdinand