Paving slabs, where is the best place to buy them?

blue_monkey_2

Apologies if this is in the wrong place, I never know where to ask these questions.

I need paving slabs. A whopping 84 sqm of them. The bloke doing the work said we would be best going for the ones that come in 3 sizes but where on earth do we buy these?

I've been looking on places like Wickes & B&Q and it is around £300 for 6-7 sq. I am getting a bit panicky now. Wher eis the best places to get them from, do not want bog standard cheapies but something decent that is not painted concrete type as they chip and they need to be hardwearing for the kids to ride bike on.

Any ideas at all??

spolton

Central concrete in Wiltshire are currently running an offer on buff coloured concrete slabs for just less than £10 per square metre. They are 40 mm thick, high quality concrete, coloured all the way through as you request. You may have to wait until they have a lorry going your way for the delivery, or pay extra or something. You can ring Matt or Lewis on 01249 821350

mardatha

Up here the council roads dept sells used ones for £1 each. But you need pick them up !

missm29

You need to get in contact with builders mechants Jewsons etc and ask what their best price is, you can say you want trade prices, they sell to the public aswell. To get the best prices you need to have an account or order regular. Have you checked out ebay? that where i sell all our left overs.

blue_monkey_2

Thanks, yes I need so many it'll be inpossible to pick them up. Lanscaper is starting the work possibly next Thursday and he is having a look as well. I did not think of Jewsons though, thanks for that thought.

I've looked on eBay and there are some good prices. In fact I found some but my landscaper said that we needed to be careful as some are concrete with like a paint overlay. This is what we have around our pond at the moment and they chip really badly. Whatever get has to be hardwearing and last because it is for the kids to ride their bikes around on.

They have some Bradstone on eBay from the Bradstone Factory Shop but I do not need 360 sqm, which is a shame as they are more than just perfect and we had in fact looked at something similar.

I did not want the cheapest council type ones if I am honest, we have saved the money so want to have something nice that will last a long time.

I've looked at Buildbase, Wickes, B&Q (these are 3 weeks delivery but we are going to store tomorrow), I am VAT registered and self employed so it is possible I can get a trade account and say I am improving my premises (I work from home) so I will give that a try.

missm29

Also if you phone Jewsons, different branches, even different people give different discounts, so call a couple of times. The other suppliers we use are Elliotts, South Coast brick and tile, John Davidson Pipes (they do paving), Keyline. To open an account they ask for trade references and a bank reference, whether they actually check i don't know, they never did a credit check on my otherhalf though as i checked his file.

blue_monkey_2

Thanks MissM, I've also found Travis Perkins stocks the paving slabs we was looking at. We are going to have a look to be sure at what we want and to see what else we can get in the way of discount and will have a ring around.

nikkit72

try freecycle too , thats where we got ours from

blue_monkey_2

I thought of that nikkit but we need a lot and I do not mind paying as we have been saving and saving for having this done. They would be all 'odds and ends' if I got them from freecycle and I do not want this, we want them all the same style and colour. We need around 200 450x450 slabs - more if we get the different sized ones that our landscaper mentioned and no-one is going to give £800 worth of slabs away, let's be honest.

ecsb

what area are you based?

Clowance

we bought some from a concrete place which cast their own, it was bowers in Poole; but if you look in the yellow pages you will probably find a similar place wherever you are.
DIY stores are Never Cheap.