How to Install a Paver Walkway

hello again this is Doug The 2minute Gardener today we're going to talk about how to install a pav walkway so here is a nasty old concrete pav walkway it's probably 340 years old going up to the house you can see it's got some water damage a little bit of cracking uh and it just is a poor uh you know way to inv invite people to that home so step one obviously we have to get rid of it so with concrete it's best to use a jackhammer like this and just pry it up now the nice thing about this stuff uh this particular walkway is that it's only about 4 in thick sometimes when you're jackhammering up old concrete you run into stuff that's like 8 in thick with a rebar and it's really tough so you get blast it all all out with the Jackhammer always wear boots and goggles and all that kind of stuff and here they're working up to the St now the stoop is going to be a little thicker because it's the they're pouring all the way up to the house but you just have to keep blasting away getting rid of all that stuff hauling it off to the dump now some there are some dumps that actually have Concrete Recycling because this stuff can be recycled into road base so it's important that you you know look into recycling concrete it just automatically throw it in the dump because sometimes it can and as you're going to see later that road basee comes in handy all right Next Step once you get all the debris out you're going to want to do some rough grading now the important thing with the rough grading is know how thick your PA is and we'll talk about P thickness and road base and leveling SC in just a second but you need to have an idea of how thick all of those elements are together so you know how far down to go to do that grading and lay it all down so it's really important I recommend you use a string line uh to kind of give a visualization of where where will the top of the paer pathway be and lay that out once you figure that out then you start building back up so here's the road base I was talking about this is recycled concrete for the most part and so you can use that recycled concrete uh or basically road base is what you're buying but it is recycled concrete and that's why it's important to recycle it so once you get to this point you lay down the string line again that string line represents the top of the C line so that way you're using that as a guide for laying all these layers in and as you can see there top of the subbase should be about 2 in below the final grade of the walkway before it's compacted and yes you do compact it the reason pavers always go on road base is that you never want to put it on bare dirt because the dirt will shift and settle then you'll have this bucking and weaving so you need to lay down that base and water it in and then you get the old plate compact and pound that baby and get it nice and firm and hard to get it ready for the leveling sand so here is an here is that plate compactor kind of a fun little guy you can rent these uh in most good big rental houses and it just pounds it and compacts it really well in there to get you a nice hard surface and that is almost as hard as concrete not quite but again the nice thing about comact de road base is that it is a little permeable again the great thing about using pavers is that you are creating a surface that is permeable and can allow water to run through it so it's not going to pull up if you remember in the beginning of the video that concrete had all these pockets that's where water was pulling up it was never level it was never leveled properly all right once you have leveled and compacted your road base now you're going to add this leveling sand this is the final level uh layer of material before the pavers and this establishes the grade for the pavers and you can see the guys are using those bars to get an absolutely perfect level with a very slight pitch when you're doing these kind of walkways you want to pitch it a little bit away from the house so that water will kind of run in that direction all right once you've laid all the leveling sand then you start doing the field pavers now field pavers are the pavers in the middle of the pathway or patio you can by the way extrapolate all this to do a paver patio as well and so you want to lay those field papers out first and then you're going to get into the soldier course around the edge and we'll get to that in just a second but you see once you got a pattern going and the great thing about papers is there's lots of different patterns that you can use uh depending on the kind of pattern you have the paper you have you can lay out all kinds of cool patterns as well so lay out the field and then you're going to start working on the edging so the edging is the part that actually gets concreted and to lock it all in place so you lay out the field and these guys are doing a great job and you can see this is kind of a cool multicolor type of P um and you just kind of L and the nice thing about most papers is they kind of fit together they have very small little grooves to kind of help guide them in and again once you've established that little Field layout uh it really is kind of nice and you tap it in with a sledgehammer and we'll get into a few more steps of revolving the pavers but now you've laid it in so now time to lay the edging in it so the Border pavers get set in concrete and the way guys typically do this is they will lay that border paper down a soldier course or a sailor course a soldier course is what you see there um I'm sorry that's a sailor course it goes around it a soldier course should be actually pointed in towards the patio itself once they've laid it all out so they know exactly where it is they will take it up and then lay down a layer of concrete around the edge and the reason this is important is if you do not use that concrete Edge underneath the soldier course the patio I mean the pavers could move off the pathway and eventually you get separation which leads to wavering and buckling and weeds and all that kind of stuff so it's really important that you lay down that little bit of concrete and knock it all down there and there's another example of Sailor course versus Soldier course and most um Pathways use sailor courses lots of patios will use a soldier course and that's the difference there and so you keep kind of tapping Along by the way hit that like button if you are enjoying this video enjoy by the way there's also all these steps are typed up in the video description as well and in the comment section so don't feel like you have to frantically write notes for all this stuff there's links in the comment section as well for some materials and for some more ideas on P and uh Pao patios and Pathways as well all right so again you're going to new lay out that course now again as you see this one because of all the little idiosyncrasies of this particular pathway we're going to have to do some Cuts so you're going to need a masonry saw to do that and they also did kind of a nice job on the stoop all right now that you've concreted in all the edging around it and it's all nice and dry it's time to broom in the polymeric sand so what is polymeric sand this is a special sand that once it gets wet locks everything in the place so it's really important that you don't use water you first you lay it all in and here's what the polymeric sand looks like you broom it all in and make sure you get it in every single little crack to really fill it all in and again the purpose of this is to fill in all those little cracks so you don't have weeds popping up in those cracks this is something that you might have to redo every 5 years or so to fill in those cracks sometimes if you get a lot of water running through the pathway it'll wear out the sand and you have to reapply it a little bit anyway so you lay in the polymeric sand and make sure the papers are completely dry before you do this because if they're not then you could get some staining and it's just not a very attractive look so make sure everything is completely dry before you sand the pavers another term for laying in polymeric sand you're sanding the pavers and it is a special kind of sand so you've laid all the pavers in it's totally dry and now it's time to bring that plate compactor and pound that sand right down into those cracks again what you're trying to do is fill in every single nook and cranny in between those pavers so that the sand goes down inside of it because once you wet it it becomes a really nice hard seal the pavers will still be permeable water can still seep through that but again you're trying to seal the cracks so weeds won't grow in them if you ever see a paver patio or pathway with weed growing it it means that the pavers were not sanded properly so you do a final compaction which also compacts the patios down into the leveling sand and the base all right next again you want to do a sweep of it to remove all the excess sand off of there do not you a ho do not use a hose to blast it off with the water you want to sweep it off completely every little grip and actually these guys had a greata use an air blower to really blow all the loose stuff because once you wet it that sand is there permanently so you really want to make sure you do a really throw job sweeping it and blowing with a blower you do not want to use a water for cleaning the pavers off because it one again once you get that sand wet it's there and it will sand once you have completely completely cleaned everything off those pavers that's when you can actually start using a hose to do a final rinse and now again what you're trying to do is you're not trying to rinse the pavers off you are lightly wetting um the sand to get it to lock into place but again first use a broom then the blower and then you're going to use a little bit of water not a lot you're not trying to wash it out you're doing a teeny bit of water just enough to activate the chemicals in the polymeric sand so that it really really locks into place and being very careful as you're walking I'm not sure why this guy's hopping but I'm sure there is a legitimate reason for doing that uh so you use a little bit of water to activate those chemicals because again you want to activate the sand and that locks the papers in place it fills in all the crevices and you get a really nice finished look so they're done with cleaning all that stuff up and here it is again here's the before really un active concrete walkway and now the after and now um they also added some nice rock mulch to the sides of this to give it a good finished look but we've added a lot of value to this home just with this simple walkway this walkway U if in case you wondering it cost about $3,000 for a contractor to professionally install it the actual materials of this were probably about $11,000 uh this particular p p uh paver was p Cobble by Orco here in Southern California and again we just threw some a/ in Arizona Cobble on the sides to give it kind of a nice finished look also for weed control we you laid down a little weed barrier there to kind of get a nice finished look all the way out to the front gate uh again what I really like about this uh using these pavers is notice all the color variation this is one paav color this particular color and again there's links in the video description for more information about these pavers uh but look at all thator color variation adds a lot more interesting color definition to the front of this house um and like you see there it's about $15 to $20 to do it professionally hey a big thank you to Unique Landscaping they did a great job on this particular project and again if you enjoyed this video make sure to hit that like button and subscribe to get more of my garden videos until next time this is Doug The 2minute Gardener saying thanks for watching

Channel: 2 Minute Gardener

Views: 8,606

Keywords: diy paver walkway, how to build a paver walkway, paver walkway, paver patio, decomposed granite, pavers, paver ideas, patio ideas, backyard remodel, patio remodel, patio design ideas, How to install a paver pathway, How to install a pathway, Pietra Cobble pavers, Orco pavers, how to lay pavers, pavers installation, how to install a paver pathway, san diego landscape contractor, paver walkway installation, paver installation, how to, San Diego Landscape Designer, DIY

Id: 1Jq41MGtL8k

Length: 12min 31sec (751 seconds)

Published: Wed Mar 20 2024