What landscaping materials to use next to / ontop of footings?

[blatchcorn]

Hi everyone, I am renovating my Edwardian house. This forum has been super helpful to read and now I need to ask for help on a topic I cannot see discussed previously. We have high ground levels causing a damp kitchen we have no DPC and the ground levels were so high the kitchen was basically underground in some areas. In the best areas the kitchen was simply level outside. The landscaping was terrible so we opted to do a complete excavation and re-landscape the garden. The brief to our groundworks guy is to lower the ground levels as far as the footings will allow and then build back up to the lowest possible height above the footings. We will have an Indian Sandstone patio and side return.

However I am unsure what materials should sit above and alongside the footings. We currently have one footing exposed. Our tradesman wants to build the sandstone on concrete but I am concerned that if concrete is in contact with the footings could it cause damage such as spalling. Our plan is to have ACO drains offset from the building to manage surface water and the new distance we have created between internal and external floor levels should help with penetrating damp. But I have no idea what materials would be suitable to be in contact with the footings and support patio on top. I have considered that limecrete might be a suitable material for this?

Any advice is really appreciated.

 

[a twig]

I’ve always just left a strip between the wall and the start of the patio and filled it up with 20mm gravel (sometimes even a decorative one if I’m feeling fancy).

I tend to make sure the strip is roughly the width of whatever tool I’ll inevitably using to scoop out / weed / clean the gravel in the future so typically it’s the width of a small shovel ~150-200mm

 

[a twig]

Why does the ground worker want to lay the slabs on concrete? It’s not the usual approach?