How to Build a Path - a Complete Step by Step DIY Guide

two weeks ago I started building a sloping gravel path down the back of my house in today's video I'm going to show you everything I had to do from removing all the brick and debris littered soil lowering a soil and Main inspection chamber building a raised Gully installing the edgings the sub base the blinding layer gravel grids and finally the gravel I'll be commenting on each step of the process the tools I used the cost of the materials and what I've learned throughout this job now if I didn't have this YouTube channel I probably wouldn't have gone to town on this path as much as I have and my wife calls it the most over engineered path no one's ever gonna see but I've never built a path before so I thought I'd do it properly and by building this path to the highest possible specs I'm showing you all the processes involved so that if you're coming to build a path for your own you can decide which of those processes are relevant for your job and which you can just discard thank you so let's have a quick look at today's toolkit details of which will as usual bins description below the video I've got string and temp pegs line marker spray a couple of Spades matter pick on my roughneck mutt Pro digging tool a griller bar and a couple of trowels my trusty wheelbarrow with its non-puncture wheel get one of these if you haven't got one already it's game changing roughneck 10 inch soil tamper 100 millimeter gravel boards and three by one inch tantalized Timber bituminous paint not essential that's me on the overkill again decking screws quick setting post concrete reciprocating saw and SDS drill again not essential but useful mot type 1 sub base 10 millimeter golden gravel sharp sand and gravel mesh grids oh and a cameo appearance from this Evolution Hulk whack a plate now I've been wanting to turn this muddy overgrown weed strewn path into a tiger space for some time now and so although there were lots of important jobs waiting for me around the house with winter coming I thought I'd get on with us now particularly as I'd only recently finished digging up much of the puff to connect an mdpe water pipe to the mains So the plan was to line the path with a hundred millimeters deep tantalized gravel board I would excavate 110 millimeters deep this would allow me a 50 millimeter type 1 sub base with a 10 millimeter sharp sand blinding layer basically filling any imperfections in the sub bass followed by a 29 millimeter deep gravel grit to give the gravel some stability and structure and more importantly to stop it migrating down the slip and finally I'd fill the grid with 10 millimeter diameter gravel with a 20 millimeter layer above to hide the grid all of which was to finish flush with the gravel board and the inspection Chambers and Gully which peppered the path so the first job was to Mark out the position of the path which I did with a string line and some old temp packs with the inspection covers littering the pot I thought I'd make it nice and wide 1500 millimeters to give me plenty of room to walk around everything on my way down the path with the string line in position I can mark the rough position of the path with a line marker spray and then it was a painfully slow process of Excavating the path from my Matic pick and Spade the spray line was just there as an approximate guide when hacking away soil with a Matic pick the string was a more accurate guide for the edging when I came to concrete this in later one of the issues with building a path is working out what to do with all the material you escalate the Earth excavator was littered with building waste bricks broken clay pipe and lots of small stones so I stretched a wire mesh over my wheelbarrow and sifted the soil from the rest of the debris the soil went on the main lawn to help level it after that trench work in January for the car charger cabling had left it incredibly uneven where the Digger I hired from a friend sunk into the soft ground leftover materials helped to compact partially filled trenches and the remainder finished up in my skip with enough material excavated I could start preparing the edging constructed from 100 millimeter tunnelized gravel boards bought from my local Timber yard I had some lengths of tantalized three by two left over from a previous job and I cut these into 28 centimeter approximately lengths to serve as post for the gravel boards with a 45 degree angle at one end to go at the top of the gravel board the idea being that by angling this and setting it down 15 to 20 mil from the top of the board it would be hidden when back filled with soil and protected by the angle from rotting I treated the post with bituminous paint Overkill I know but if I have to replace the boards at any point it would be great if the posts were still intact so while the posts were completely covered in bitumen I left the gravel boards untreated except for the cut edges this was partly an aesthetic thing but also I've since dug another trench for some bay window foundations on the other side of the house and the gravel boards laid 10 years ago are still looking in pretty good Nick so hopefully these new ones will last just a while yet and if I do have to replace them the posts should be okay I spaced the pace at 1.2 meter intervals along the boards and dug holes just over 300 millimeters deep so the post could be set just below the surface I used a combination of the roughneck mud probe digging tool my SDS drill in chisel mode because yes you guessed it there were bricks hiding below the surface and my gorilla bar all of these are very effective tools to dig a narrow diameter hole like this I decided to screw the post to the gravel boards rather than set them in concrete first that way I could get the gravel boards millimeter perfect using the string line as a reference I placed the face on a shallow bed of gravel and then filled each hole a third full with water before pouring in the fast setting post concrete mix which you fill until the concrete domes out of the water and then Tamp down the concrete with an old band to remove any air or dry pockets [Music] ten minutes later and the concrete is set the next job is to lower the Riser on the soil pipe inspection chamber something else I haven't done before I read there are guidelines on the risers and so I cut through these with my reciprocating saw which after experimenting also with my grinder was the easiest way to get through this particular riser and yes I realized I should have removed this first before cutting but luckily no damage was done the problem was with this done the Riser didn't slot into the chamber as I imagined it would so I removed the flat section at the bottom of the Riser this time experimenting with my grinder and the universal diamond cutting disc that I've got for it beveled the edge with my belt sander and then the Riser fit really snugly into the inspection chamber I also had to lower the inspection chamber for the water meter because it was also sat above the gravel board edging but this was a simpler task of unscreen the inspection color and trimming the pipe down again with my grinder other tidying up jobs included using my SDS drill and rotary mode to Chisel away concrete belated pot and a grinder to trim and tidy up the edge of the concrete path and remove a redundant iron pipe that was sticking into the pot what this pipe was doing is anyone's guess with these jobs done and half the gravel boards in place I was making decent progress more digging and Excavating and the remainder of the path complete with slope was more or less done as I excavated I installed more gravel boards including this tricky section around a hedge route that couldn't be cut away iron filled the back of the gravel boards with stones sifted from the excavation finishing off with some topsoil to get the path level I decided to screw a 2 by 1 inch roof band to the house exactly horizontal with the gravel boards as they sloped down the path I then screwed a piece of feather edge fence board I had lying around to another roof found left over from the garage re-roof project just wide enough to span the gap between the edging and the band I'd screwed to the wall this not only enabled me to get the path horizontal but also by moving the feather edge board up and down on the button I could set this new leveling tool to each level as I built up The Path foundations so I could get the depth of each exactly right there have been so many obstacles in my way on this job and one of them was a layer of concrete that the previous owner had laid below the lawn I think to prevent water getting into the cellar although I haven't found removing it to have any effect on water Ingress but the final part of the path excavated I could screw the last few gravel boards into place and set their pacing concrete I'd excavated a bit too deep before I put that leveling tool together to check this out and as I had quite a lot of surplus gravel infused soil left over from earlier trench digging I decided to spread this down the length of the path leveling it off for a super accurate troop base before infilling to level the material I used a short piece of feather edge board a crude but very effective way of smoothing out the material which I kept using for each subsequent layer for the rest of the job in hindsight using this additional layer was a bit of a waste of time as the mot type 1 sub base would have been more than adequate at doing this however without it I wouldn't have achieved the right depth of MOT from the top of the path I bought two wonton sacks and used both and it was good to start off the infill with a near perfectly prepared base not to mention a good way of honing or practicing my leveling skills it was time to spread out some weed matting down the length of the path to suppress the growth of any weeds through the path it can also help stabilize the ground when loaded with the sub-base material most of this was left over from the decking build a couple of years ago I just had to buy a one and a half meter section to go down at the bottom I cut the weed matting around the inspection covers with a razor blade with all the path preparation done it was time to start building up the foundations with the sub base this is an mot type 1 sub base basically a crushed aggregate dust to 40 millimeters in size the reason for this is I'll be laying a gravel grid and this needs a solid foundation the gravel grid manufacturers recommend 50 to 100 millimeters in depth given the quality of the preparation below the sub bass and the nature of the path I decided to go with the minimum 50 millimeters depth I ended up needing two wonton bags each holding roughly 50 20 kilogram bags in it but at 46 Pounds for a ton it's so much cheaper to buy a 1 ton sack than the individual bags which cost between three and five pounds depending on where you get them from to get the sub bass level right I adjusted my feather edge leveling board so it projected 40 mil below the gravel board edging that way when I tap down the sub base I had achieved as near as possible 50 millimeters depth of sub bass or 50 millimeters below the top of the gravel board to compact the sub base I started using my roughneck 10 inch tamper which was very effective and I would say adequate for a path of this size as I worked down the path it became obvious the kitchen waste bottle Gully was too low I could probably have bought a riser to raise the high but this would have clashed with the kitchen sink waste out of that so I had a better idea and used a few brick tiles I had Unearthed in the garden over the years to create a new raised section trimming them down with my Titan nine inch angle grinder clamping them together and then cementing them in place with a strong sharp sand mix of approximately three parts sand to one part cement bolstered with some waterproof admixture I sloped the cement into the Gully to diver any splashing water down into it and I've got to say I'm pretty chuffed with the results just got to sort out this lousy pointing the previous owner did and the next hour can continue with laying the sub bass so up to now I've been using the manual tamper I was however curious to see how a whacker plate would compare and I knew u-lock would be pointing out I shouldn't use one so it just so happened my local agricultural DIY store had recently bought an evolution Hulk whacker plate so I hired it for 25 pounds for a day what did I think well clearly it's more effective quicker and less physical than a manual tamper you can see here just how useful it is at compressing the sub layer and therefore essential for large paths or driveways but it did displace material if you weren't careful with it particularly when changing direction also you still need a manual tamper to get into the corners and I've got to say it's had some pretty poor reviews from contractors on Screwfix so after using it for a day I returned it as I felt I could manage with a manual tamper for the next layer with the sub base successfully laid leveled and clamped it was time for the shops and blinding layer the gravel grid manufacturer recommends installing a 10 to 15 millimeter bedding layer of sharp or grit sand this is used to Blind off the Corsa sub-based material and fill in any voids in the surface of the sub base it also enables that final levels to be achieved the bedding layer is then compacted and left ready to receive the gravel grid foreign work done it was time for the fun bit laying the gravel grits the purpose of these grits is to create a firm free draining surface that stabilizes the gravel and makes it easy to walk drive and even cycle over and in my case prevents the gravel migrating down the slope of the path the grids have a membrane underneath which is designed to prevent the gravel falling through the bottom of the grid causing the grid to rise to the surface there are two overlaps of the membrane one short and one longer on the opposite sides of each sheet so that when you butt the sheets up to each other there's a decent overlap I went with the lightest Duty 29 millimeter thick grid which is 1.2 meters long by 0.8 meters wide with my path 1.5 meters wide this left a gap at each side they recommend a small Gap but perhaps not this wide but I thought it wouldn't matter as I wouldn't be walking along the edges but actually as I laid the grid I decided to infill the majority of the edges particularly down the slope with offcuts to stabilize as much gravel as possible you can cut the grid with either a handsaw I found my o in floorboard saw particularly good the manufacturer says you can use a grinder but the blade on mine isn't wide enough to go through so I ended up using my reciprocating saw particularly useful for cutting around the inspection chamber covers I thought I'd film this bit but I don't have any footage but you get the idea and so after all that hard work I found myself at the final and most Blissful stage of this project in filling the mesh with gravel you need to check carefully what gravel is recommended for the mesh you've bought in my case 10 to 12 millimeters is the maximum recommended size and so I took myself off to my local Builders Merchants to see what they've got basically I think 10 mils what we need that's Nordic Spa quite white and I suspect prone to going a bit green or this golden gravel so I went for the golden gravel and bought two wonton sacks on the basis that I'd so far got through two sacks of the type 1 mot to fill a similar 50 millimeter depth and error as I'll come on to shortly the golden gravel is at a 111 pounds per wonton sack expensive so I decided to part fill the new grid structure with some of the cheaper 10 millimeter gravel at 50 pounds per bag that I had left over from infilling around the surfaces on my recent trench dig and onto this I poured the golden gravel leveling as usual with my trusty piece of feather edge board and with a band now dismantled from its piece of feather edging I'd now unscrewed the guide piece from the wall of the house so with no reference to keep the path level I balanced the spirit level on top of the button which helped me to ensure the gravel was spread out to a consistent depth about 20 millimeters above the grid structure this has to be one of the most satisfying jobs that I've ever done it's just so blissfully therapeutic [Music] foreign [Music] foreign [Music] I think next year uh come springtime I'll do a couple of videos sorting out the rest of this uh wall sorting out some of the dodgy rendering done by the builders I got when I moved into the house I mentioned that arrow with the golden gravel earlier bizarrely because I had that cheaper I was meant to be pea gravel I don't know what they sent me it was similar actually to the golden gravel but because I infilled partly the grid with that stuff by the time I came to put the golden gravel on top I only ended up needing one one ton sack for a path which is one and a half meters wide by about 13 meters in length by the time you count that little side return bit at the start down at the bottom but it won't go to waste because I've gone Epic log build coming up over the next couple of weeks so keep an eye out for that which brings us neatly onto the costings for this job if we exclude that one ton bag that I didn't need and I suppose the tools that I've already got lying about this job came to just over 700 pounds which does sound like quite a lot of money doesn't it for a path but as I said at the start I did over engineer it so if you're thinking of doing a job like this you can think about the processes that have been involved that you can maybe cut down on to save a bit of money and uh 300 pounds of that 700 quid was for the gravel mesh and the company that Supply it do say if you've got an existing substructure which is decent quality particularly things like tarmac or concrete sub base you can actually put the mesh directly down onto that which removes a need for all of those layers that I built up so that's it for today it'd be great if you could give this video the thumbs up below if you found it useful and as usual details of all the tools that I've been using and all the products that I bought will be in the description below the video which obviously you can access on your smartphone by clicking on the little arrow and on your PC by clicking on the show more button and finally as I always say if you're new to to my channel it would literally mean so much for me to have you subscribe you can do that by clicking on the link here and don't forget to click the Bell notification icon so you get notified of all my future uploads see you soon

Channel: Charlie DIYte

Views: 114,670

Keywords: how to, how to build a path, gravel grid, gravel mesh, diy, path, gardening, gravel, sharp sand, wacker plate, type 1 mot sub base, complete step by step diy guide, complete guide, golden gravel, home improvement, diy walkway, garden walkway, diy garden path

Id: Nq6-axa2i2o

Length: 19min 10sec (1150 seconds)

Published: Fri Oct 21 2022