In my back yard, I have an old patio, that
just isn't cutting it for what I want Part of the problem is that Moss and mold
grow on the patio frequently. The reason for this, is because there really
isn't a slope to the patio, so when it rains, the water doesn't run off to the side Another issue is that weeds often grow in
between the gaps in the pavers I would like to fix those issues, as well
as expand the patio outward, double the size of the original patio If I were to have a company professionally
install a patio of this size, we are looking at a project that would cost around $14,000
And this is why I decided to build this myself Although the details don't need to be settled
just yet, one thing to think about is the types of pavers that you want to install You can visit a stone yard in person to look
at samples, but don't write off looking at the selection at you local big box store either In my case, I found that it was easier to
find the style of pavers that I wanted online, and look up a stone yard that carried them, Before I can get to work building a new patio,
I need to start taking the old one apart, so after taking all the furniture off the
patio, I can begin lifting the old pavers I
moved them all to my front yard, and give them away to who ever wanted them In the end there were about 100 pavers weighing
40 lbs. each Now I can start to plan digging out the ground
to make room for the new pavers. clearing this area won't be a small task,
if I were to have a company dig this area for me, a quote I got was $2,000 just for
the digging. And in addition to clearing out the area with
the grass, the area that the old pavers were on will need some attention as
well, as we will need to add a slope, so water no longer pools up -One of the first things that will need to
be done before any digging is done, is to have the county come out and mark the
utility lines in the work area With the utilities marked, I can begin digging, Before starting to dig, it is a good idea
to do some planning so you know how much digging will be needed. In a traditional patio install, after the
weed barrier, we would add 4 inches of gravel prior to placing down leveling sand, To make room for the 4 inches of gravel, it
will mean a lot more digging, and a lot more dirt to haul away, but there is an alternative. Using a paver base panel, like these brock
pads will replace the need to add a gravel sub base. But there is a trade off. I can get the gravel
I need for this job for about $400. The paver panels to cover my planned work
area will cost about $1,000. In the end, I opted to pay the extra for paver
panels, to help save my back a bit on the shoveling, and dirt hauling,
AND make things a bit easier logistically. Had I gone with the gravel, I would have needed
to have order the gravel and the pavers at the same time, to prevent paying multiple
deliveries. This would mean that at the time of delivery,
I would have pavers sitting in my driveway that would need to stay there until after
I place the gravel, compact it with a rented plate compacter,
and then add and screed the leveling sand. I think that I would need to have to take
some time off work to make sure the driveway is not being blocked by pallets of paver stones
for weeks on end. with the Paver panels, I can work on the weekends,
and then have the stones delivered once I am ready to place them. Before I start placing any sub-base material,
I am going to need to clear the patio area but one thing that slowed my digging down,
was the massive amount of roots in the area I planned for pavers
Removing the roots was no small task, I spent a full weekend doing nothing but removing
roots from the area This pile of roots is to give you an idea
how much had to be pulled, and this pile isn't even all of the roots With the roots out of the way, it is time
to remove the grass from the future patio area I found that I could take the grass out the
quickest by cutting into the ground with an edging tool into squares of turf Doing a couple foot length at a time, all
the way across the patio area And then coming back with a shovel to remove
the sod squares Alright, I finished excavating the sod and
dirt for the work area. The next step is gonna be trying to flatten,
and level out and grade the dirt area before we put the sand on To help determine my slopes I planted several
stakes, using the distance from the house as the general
marker to make sure everything was square Once I got my stakes measured out and placed
where I want them, I can tie a string line to connect the stakes Using a line level, I can ensure that my string
is perfectly level, After I do this for all my stakes,
I can use the measurements I recorded earlier with some simple math, to adjust the lines
to include a slope, by hammer each stake down by the right amount
so that water doesn't pool like it did on the old patio I will be dropping my slope at 1/8th inch
per foot, but I will be doing it in 2 direction. Once I have the string lines set at the slope
that I want, I can work the land to be parallel to my string lines Alright, and what I've done is I got my slope
pretty well established across 2 lines Going down from the house across here Then going down in the corner in that shade,
to over here And then we can see the big chunk of dirt
that I need to excavate So that it lines up with the lines that I
have already done across the sides Now I will begin to shovel off the dirt that
doesn't line up with my slopes And relocate it to a different area Once I got the entire area to line up close
with the slopes that I set, I ran a tiller to loosen up the dirt After I tilled the whole area I made sure
that the area was close to the slope I wanted with a board, and a level
that I adjusted to my slope with a wood shim and made any ground corrections that I needed
to make I then rented a plate compacter, and compacted
the work area down and flat Digging out the dirt, establishing my slopes,
and compacting the ground was a process that took me multiple weekends to get to this point Before I start to put anything up against
the side of the house, I figured this would be a good time to clean up, and touch up the
part of the house that the patio would lay against. Now, I'm ready to lay down my fabric weed
barrier This fabric not only helps to prevent weeds,
but it keeps the sand in place and prevent it from washing away during a heavy storm I will need to lay overlapping layer over
the entirety of the work area. Try to tack down the fabric in place as soon
as you can to prevent to wind from shifting it around too much Now that the weed barrier is in place, I can
pick up my leveling sand, and prepare it for the work area. In a traditional patio install, after the
weed barrier, we would add 4 inches of gravel prior to placing down leveling sand, But when using Paver base panels, after the
weed barrier, we are ready to lay a thin 1/2inch layer of leveling sand just to make sure everything
is smooth It is ok if the dirt is not perfectly smooth
prior to laying the leveling sand, because the sand will help make the surface smooth. But there shouldn't be any areas where more
than an inch of sand is used to make the area level, otherwise you will risk the sand being
susceptible to washout in a storm In order to get the sand to be leveled at
about 1/2 inch, we will need to use some 1/2 inch pipes as guides to screed off of. And standard Rebar just happens to be cut
at 1/2 inch thickness, making it a cheap way to get guides to screed at 1/2 an inch. After laying down 2 parallel pieces of rebar,
I will lay my 2 foot level (which has a quarter inch shim at the end to take account of the
1/8 inch per foot slope I am building in) over top the rebar,
and make sure it is sloped correctly. Then I can spread the sand over the area between
the rebar, and then screed it smooth Once we screed the length of the rebar, we
can slide it down, and continue the process. Remember to continue to make sure that you
are leveled correctly, and adjust the rebar when needed. If I am off slightly, I will hammer the rebar
down where it is too high We will continue the screeding process until
the entire work are is screeded. Once finished with a row, we will move the
rebar over and continue our sand placement After we finish screeding all our sand, we
can begin laying down our paver base panels. Note the gaps in sand where the rebar was,
we will fill those areas in once as we lay our paver base panels Placing the panels down is simple and straight
forward, just place them down, and lay the interlocking overlaps over each other. Once we get close enough to our sand gaps,
created from the rebar, we can manually fill them in with some spare sand and a trowel When laying down the paver base panels, one
of the things that we want to do is to alternate each new row with full and then half panels. Here, I am starting a new row, and starting
it off with a panel that I am cutting in half. The reason I am doing this is so the corners
of each panel don't line up with each other, and instead
end on a straight edge. This helps to give the panels more strength And once we get to the edge of our work area,
we can cut our final panels to fit in at the edge And now, we are ready to order our pavers,
and have them placed The stone yard I ordered from even allowed
me to order a 1/2 pallet of a common edging brick, in addition to the 3 pallets worth
of the 4 piece paver combo from Nicolock After our pavers are delivered, we will want
to check out our stones to make sure that they were delivered correctly, and in good
condition, and then we can get to work placing them. I was not able to have them delivered right
by the work area, so I will need to use a wheel barrow
to transport them, load at a time. I start by laying down some of the edge bricks
on the perimeter before moving to the main 4 piece pavers These pavers include 4 different sizes, which
will allow me to lay the pavers in a random pattern, and should save
me from making too many cuts to stone It took us 2 days to layout the pavers over
the 18foot by 23 foot work area. Ok, as we can see, this project was mostly
cut less, meaning I didn't have to make any cuts to the brick
I just lined it up, so it ended approximately where I wanted to end it. But if we look close, there are a couple of
spots, where there is just no way, I am going to have to make some sort of a cut
So its not completely cut less, I'm going to have to make a few cuts to this edge brick
One there And a couple there just to make sure everything
lines up tight and gets in there. To prepare for the cuts that I will need to
make, I will first measure the gap that I need to fill
Then take a spare brick, and draw a line at that measurement, so when cut, it will fit
in the gap. To actually cut the brick, I used a wet/Dry
diamond blade on an angle grinder. I found that it was slightly easier to cut,
with a little bit of water on the brick The angle grinder blade was not long enough
to cut all the way through the brick. So I needed to cut the brick on all 4 sides,
before propping the mostly cut brick on other bricks, and finishing the "cut" by hitting
the brick with a rubber mallet I then used the angle grinder again to smooth
out the rough area that broke off from the hammer blow After the brick was cut and smoothed, it could
be dropped into place I did the same thing for the other 2 cuts
that were needed Now that our bricks and pavers are in place,
I can hammer in the edge restraints so that nothing moves over time The edge restraint comes in 6 foot lengths,
so when I have a piece that extends beyond the work area, I can cut it down to size. After the edge restraint is fully nailed in,
I can begin to pour in the polymeric joint sand. Although the box says it is to be used for
gaps as small as 1/8th inch, online for the same product said to be used for gaps as small
as 1/16th inch And it ended up working out well After pouring the sand over top a section
of pavers, we will want to work it into the gaps using a large shop broom After we have spread out our sand, we will
want to come back with a hand tamper to lightly vibrate the pavers
so that the sand is worked in deeper into the gaps. A plate compactor will be too powerful to
do this when using paver base panels After vibrating down the sand, we can add
a bit more And then vibrate it down again Once more time we will push the sand into
the gaps with a shop broom Before using a blower to blow away any excess
sand. We want to make sure that there is no poly
sand left on the surface when we activate the sand The next step will involve getting our garden
hose set to a mist setting, and then misting down about 200 square feet of the patio
Which in my case is about half the patio. continue wetting the area down for a full
30 seconds, then wait for 30 seconds, and then finally
wet it down for another 30 seconds After that, we can do the same thing to the
other section of the patio. After you have wet down the whole patio area,
use a blower to help push the excess water away And after that, we are done. Lets take a look at the cost breakdown of
this project. I didn't include the cost of tools, other
than the ones I needed to rent, but even if you needed
to buy every single tool needed to do this job, you still would probably end up saving
about $10,000 Lets take a moment to compare before and after,
to see how everything came out.
I can see myself doing this, naively to the amount of work, getting to hate it halfway through, saying what I'll do differently next time, but also how ill never do it again, eventually finish with everyone saying it looks great, but being disproportionately upset about the tiny mistakes that only I know or can even notice. You know, like every home improvement project.
Wasn’t planning on spending 16 minutes watching a patio video but here I am. Learned some stuff for the future though.
For what it's worth and those reading - I just did some artificial turf and some pavers too.
Rather than buying sand in bags, if you have a truck and/or trailer you can get bulk products at your local asphalt/concrete yard. You can even rent a dump trailer for $50/day or so in most places.
I paid $30 for two+ tons of paver base sand, about 35 bags worth. At $4 per bag at the big box, that's $140. I would have paid $11 per ton, but my local yard has a $30 min charge for pickup.
EDIT: typos, and also, its a LOT easier to deal with - no bags to haul, throw away, etc. Just shovel into a wheelbarrow and tip it into your space.
I probably would have gone with a power washer and some weed killer/preventer and made this a r/powerwashingporn post instead, but to each his own.
You really should have gone with a 4" crush and run base. We fix DIY patios like this every year that use the same materials. This patio will shift, have waves and possibly buckle. The poly base panel is not a sustainable substitute.
Tech specs and installation guide here, just choose your region: https://www.belgard.com/resource-guide
Personally I would have put the smaller cuts against the house as opposed to out in the yard where I am likely to be standing.
Nice and big respect for making a video from this. I never can find the time to setup, film, edit, ...
$10,000 is a LOT of money, but you did a LOT of work.
How many "work days" (8ish-hour shifts) did you drop on this bad boy? It seemed like a lot of weekends....
When my dad DIY our last patio he got carpel tunnel in both wrists. The patio was gorgeous and then we moved.