No no no, I don't have anyone that needs to be...umm...dealt with. This is a real patio. I'm ripping out half of the deck on the side of the house and replacing it with "hardscaping". That's my word of the day, it's like hardparking but a lot more work.
I'm looking at one of Riccobene's Patio on a pallet setups - a collection of four different irregularly shaped cast stones that look pretty much like flagstone. I've seen a display at Lowes and it looks good.
The stones are fairly large. The smallest is 0.5 square feet and the largest is 2 square feet. They claim they can be laid over a firm base with nothing more than leveling sand on top.
Who has experience laying this kind of stone? We're on reasonably sandy soil here with little rainfall (6"/year or so). The patio would be at the top of a sloping lawn so it will never see standing water. Should I lay down 4" of aggregate for a base anyway? What do I need to know?
I've done it several times and it looks good and lasts well, but it's a lot of work. More work than you're expecting.
I'm about to do it again.
The biggest issue is getting the ground level. You don't really need to lay sand or aggregate IF your soil will allow you to level and pack it smooth. Regardless of base you will need to do some periodic re-leveling in spots in the first year. The stone will "settle" some based upon traffic and wetness.
The first time I used a sand base and I had to go back much more than the other times when I just used a small amount of sand to smooth out the packed dirt.
When you are doing it you'll think it's not working right as the stones don't seem tight enough. They'll want to move a tiny amount, but once you add the finishing sand (sand on top that you work into the cracks) things tighten up a lot.
I dont have any firsthand experience with that product, but have laid a concrete paver patio out. Here in the land of clay, we leveled the area by hand with shovels and the like (about 10'x10'). Then we laid down about 3" of crushed limestone, and packed with a gas powered plate compactor. Then laid down some 1" pipe conduit on either side, and used that to screed a layer of sand flat and level with a long 2x4. Then worked from one side to the other with pavers, using a big rubber mallet to level them. We used sand mixed with a mild adhesive agent swept into the gaps as a kind of "grout" for patios. Its not nearly as tough as real grout, but its kept everything in place for about 3 years now.
Also keep in mind there are different types of sand.
Smooth, rounded shapes of the sand granules don't pack well (I believe playground sand falls into that category).
Sand with a ragged texture locks the pieces together and it packs well and stays packed.
I used a load of brick sand (smooth sand) to try to fix a steep slope that had washed out and the sand just kept sliding down the hill.
My own experience pretty well matches carguy123's above. Did a small brick area. I'm sure we leveled it, because it's flat. I think we used a ground fabric, then laid the bricks. Maybe sand as a base (don't remember). Then sand poured over everything to lock it in place.
It's been there ~10 years now, and looks fine. Still level, still all locked together.
I guess the only thing I'd caution is be realistic about your loads. If it's only going to see people on it that's one thing. But if cars and riding mowers and such are going to drive over it, that would be different.
And like he said, it took a heck of a lot longer to do than I expected.
When I helped a friend install his patio we did it exactly as 4cylindrfury described. This was based on the advice of another mutual friend who is a contractor that installs decks and patios. We skipped the gas powered compactor, just used a hand tamping tool. It was a bitch to dig out in the first place and rocky so it would have been hard to level without the gravel in this case. You could probably get away without the gravel, or a small layer. We definitely did not put down a 4" layer like you mentioned keith. Just enough to get it even.
one thing to consider is its sometimes desirable to have a slight slope to the patio so the water will run-off and not pool up anywhere. especially if you are butting it up against the house.
A neighbor did his driveway in paver bricks. He busted up the original concrete, had a curb put in on both sides and a concrete block wall for a level extension on one side (parking for a boat). The concrete work took ~2 days, laying the brick almost a MONTH. 
Every day I'd come home, he and his two sons would be putting down bricks.
Thanks for the experience, guys. Janel is an estimator/project manager for highway construction, and she thought the 4" base was total overkill. But it's what's in the spec sheets for some sorts of pavers. Just not these larger area ones. I wanted to do a reality check. I'll be pulling out the deck this weekend and laying eyes on just what kind of dirt I'm dealing with. I've actually not done much digging around here other than in the garden.
Loading won't be a problem. In order to get anything heavy on the stones, I'd have to disassemble a fence and drive across the lawn. So it legitimately will be used for foot traffic only.
Using the correct sand is easy. Because of where Janel works, I can tell her I need enough ASTM C33 washed concrete sand to give me a 2" base over 300 square feet and she says "we'll drop it off tomorrow". Unfortunately, all the skid steers are on jobs so I can't get one of those to play with 
Apparently this particular product lays pretty quickly because of the size of the pieces. But I do expect it to be quite a bit of hard work.
The leveling of each block is where the time comes in.
I didn't use strings as they kept getting in the way. I simply laid on the ground with a trowel in hand and then laid & leveled each piece as I put it down. You do have to keep an eye towards your final edge.
And speaking of edges, I wanted mine to be pretty high so that it would be easier to mow & edge so I finished mine off with the metal landscaping edging. That held it in place quite well and gave me a straight edge which made it easier to weed whack.
Oh... Patio. Damn my reading disability.
If the base is level and compacted, why do you need to level each stone?
One more experience pretty much like 4cylindrfury's.
A few detail differences... Right next to house, so base was dug to slope away slightly. Cloth on ground, and then 6" of rock, which went from being loose to almost feeling like giant-grit asphalt after running the tamper over it, then another layer of cloth, then sand, then pavers, then sweep sand over the top.
Pick a dry time to do it. We did it in January in Oregon, and the sand was too wet to sweep in and finish up for months. Now we have weeds growing up because dirt blew/washed over into the gaps between the pavers...
On the plus side, since nobody's dumb enough to build anything in January here, when we called for rock, the dump truck was at our place 45 minutes later 
That's not a real answer to the question, Carguy 
Another question, specifically for those who have not laid down aggregate as a base layer - have you done a patio using larger stones? I can see how it might be different for those versus brick.
Why is because you aren't laying over concrete so level is a relative term. You will find the stones won't fit completely flat and will "give" a little so you'll need to adjust them some.
If you are laying over compacted sand, keep in mind that's not a completely hard and once you tamp the stones down they may be off a little. It's tedious, but not hard. This is the part that takes so much time.
Then as others have said you sweep sand between the cracks and that firms things up the rest of the way.
wbjones
UltraDork
8/31/12 7:23 a.m.
this ... you can A: have fun + B: it'll flat out do the job .... most rental places have them
The fireplace in my house is made with cast stone. I don't know about the ones you are looking at, but the cast stuff in my house is soft, almost like an unfired brick. It's soft enough that I don't like the idea of hanging anything substantial (like a TV) on it.
About leveling: if there's thickness variations that will mean each stone has to be individually accounted for, if you get my meaning. I also learned from doing the ceramic tile in my house that supporting the edge is very important, in fact that's about half of the grout's job which would be replaced by sand in your case.
Whacker Packer for sub base definetely a pan vibrator for finish after pavers are laid. Google paver installation , lots of good information out there although 4" sub base sounds excessive for foot traffic. Sub base should be 3/4" "Crusher Run" which will have some fines in it to fill in the voids between the larger rocks. It's not complicated , but to do it properly its a detailed process. Edge restraint is pretty important.
Okay, so I'm halfway through this job. A few things I've learned.
The manufacturer for the stones tells a different story when you actually call them than they do in their advertising materials. I'm putting down a 3" base of gravel.
It's really useful having in-laws with farm equipment. I borrowed their dump trailer and a tractor for the excavation. Tractors are fun, and I didn't hit the house once. I'm putting this patio where there used to be a deck, and the dry soil underneath is basically as hard as concrete. There's no way I could have dug it by hand without a pickaxe. That bodes well for the deck in the long term of course.
The gravel I'm using is 3/4" road base. Again with the in-laws, Janel's dad ran crushers for years and Janel works in highway construction so this is the sort of thing that gets discussed at the dinner table. I'll check with Janel when she gets home, but I think it's the same thing as crusher run. You can buy it by the bag from Lowes for an absolutely crippling price, or get it for about $10/ton from a gravel pit. It's even cheaper when you have a wife in the industry. I laughed when I looked at the bill for the first 4 ton load.
Turns out the prep isn't much different than building a road, so I have an in-house expert I used a plate compactor for the sub base. Once the stones arrive, I'll put down the sand. It might be a week or two, Lowes (the local distributor for the product) is still trying to figure out when they'll be able to get a truck in from Denver. I never did manage to get the "patio on a pallet" mix of stones I wanted originally, their distribution is unfortunately not good in smaller markets. I'm using a subset of that mix from the same manufacturer.
As expected, there are a lot of secondary jobs to do. I had to rework part of my irrigation system and also discovered a previous irrigation system buried under the deck. That was a surprise. I also discovered a few relics from the past: the top to a 35mm film canister, a 3.5" floppy disc and a pull top from a beer can
