Tiling the courtyard: having cement/concrete tiles made to order?

[Garald]

Work is moving forward, and I should start thinking of what to do with the courtyard once everything else is done. (My architect is miffed and has washed her hands of that task, so it's now up to me and the workers.) It's a shared courtyard (40m², much longer than it's wide), but I've got the coop's authorization to work on it, changing the surface (in poor condition) if needed. 

 

 

Now, I had originally thought that, if I had a bit of money left and the end, and the neighbors were nice and didn't force me to sink money on a soundproof sarcophage for the heat pump's external unit, I might offer a nice terracotta tiling as a gift to the coop, with an aperiodic tiling of course:

 

(picture from todobarro.com)

 

Then I learned that installing a terracotta floor on a Paris-area courtyard is a bad idea - water will seep into the terracotta, and, on the first non-trivial frost, it will freeze, expand and crack the tiles. 

 

I was just talking to the bookseller in a little bookshop on building trades I randomly found while walking down a street - I went it because I wanted to figure out what was up with the quasimasonic symbols. (The bookshop turned out to belong to an interesting organization called Les Compagnons du Devoir, which really seem to be something between masons and freemasons.) He confirmed what I had read, and told me that the courtyard would in fact get damaged much more quickly than I thought - in one winter rather than twenty. So, time to shelf that plan -

 

- but I showed him pictures of tilings such as the one above, and he said that I should look into putting my plan into practice using colored concrete instead.

 

Now, what is important here is not so much coloring concrete (though having it be non-gray would be nice) as shaping concrete. Of course, technically, that should be easy, in that cement basically begs to be cast into shapes, no? But where and how do I find a company willing to make tiles of two or three given geometrical shapes for me without charging me a fortune?

 

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Someone in ForumConstruire.com has just suggested an alternative - googling "moule béton extérieur façon terracota" or "béton matricé".  That looks like the poor man's version of courtyard tiles - using a plastic mould to make indentations on fresh cement. I guess I might be able to have a plastic mould 3D-printed somehow. However, it seems to me that this is really not that helpful for an aperiodic tiling; it's really meant for patterns that repeat. (Also, isn't drainage and the like more complicated if there aren't separate tiles? Or have I got this completely backwards?)

[Temp]

Back in the 1970s my father and I made about 15 sqm of coloured paving slabs ourselves. Used home made wooden frames. Even mixed the concrete by hand. Quite hard work but not impossible. Might even be able to use several of these as moulds instead of imprints. Lots of different patterns available on the web.

 

https://www.manomano.co.uk/p/crazy-patio-driveway-concrete-paving-garden-path-slab-brick-floor-tile-mould-38825559

 

Have you considered just pressure washing what's already there? Replacing the pots with planters and making a bin store? Perhape even a small shade tolerant tree in a big pot? Would probably make quite a difference. 

[markc]

Moulding concrete was pretty common in the 70’s my Saturday job was in a DIY shop and we sold moulds for patterned blocks, post caps and paving slabs. Simple steel moulds (like shallow cake tins), almost dry small agg concrete and ram it into the moulds, flip out and sprinkle with concrete dye (or mix in if doing a lot of the same colour).

[Garald]

4 hours ago, Temp said:

Have you considered just pressure washing what's already there? Replacing the pots with planters and making a bin store? Perhape even a small shade tolerant tree in a big pot? Would probably make quite a difference. 

 

Right, that's my fall back option.

 

But you would think that, in these days of 3D printing, there would be some business that, at the very least, sells moulds and imprints made to measure.

[Temp]

You could design your own. Use a 3D Printer service to make them and cast your own. However small block pavers are normally thick for a reason. It helps keep them flat, so I'd be nervous about the long term stability of this particular design..

 

 

 

 

[Garald]

18 minutes ago, Temp said:

You could design your own. Use a 3D Printer service to make them and cast your own. However small block pavers are normally thick for a reason. It helps keep them flat, so I'd be nervous about the long term stability of this particular design..

 

So, what thickness would you recommend for, say, tiles of these shapes, 20cm to a side?

 

 

I really liked the result in the Youtube video, but it does sound like this would be a very long process - only a few tiles can be made at a time. Perhaps 3D-printed imprints are the way to go. Surely there are people who have made them themselves and have documented the process?

 

Also, what are the advantages of moulded tiles vs. imprints?

Edited March 10, 2023 by Garald

[markc]

Thickness depends on size, intended traffic load and sub base prep.

domestic decorative pavers are often 25mm thick while paving slabs are 40-60mm due to the increased area and therefore bending loads

[Garald]

Is stoneware an option?