Laying a Paver Walkway & Concrete Block Steps

how's it going everyone this video is going to be how we screeded and laid all these concrete pavers as well as built these concrete block steps this was an add-on project to a backyard patio we did for these customers and I think it tied everything off really nicely the pavers on this project are made by a company called geneste they're based out of Maine the concrete block and caps are made by TECO block and if you want to know more about that check out the description below for the details but let's just get right into the day guys I hope you enjoy this video go ahead Trav show them [Applause] yeah yeah we gotta see it from the back [Music] what do you think about Travis mullet I love it I love mullets underneath the hats dude you know what I mean you got a good curl trap it's gonna be a good curl we are back on this job if you didn't see the video previously check it out we excavated and backfilled this area today we're building steps out of wall block and hopefully lay in some pavers so as I mentioned in my last video in a few previous ones as well a lot of these jobs I'm uploading are from this past season 2022 during the season I just didn't have enough time to keep up with the uploads and stay up to date so now that it's winter time I'm just posting all these videos but this was the first job my nephew Travis helped us on and it was a blast he did a really good job he's a hard worker very motivated so he will be with Ben and I on the next few series of videos and it was like I said it was just a really fun summer for both him and us it was nice having him on the job site and I think he learned a lot but here we are we we backfilled in the previous video like I said and um I'm getting this first step installed so that we can start installing some pavers and I'm going right off the corner of that foundation wall that's going to be the back of our step or retaining wall and that's just to fix this grade coming from the lawn up to the driveway as you've seen at the beginning we installed three steps with a couple Landings and that's all I'm doing I'm getting it prepared I use that level off of the driveway to find my correct height and now I'm using a string line and some levels and a square to get my back of my wall set up which I'm going to explain to you here in a minute you guys saw me um Square this line off mine squared with the with the house and that will be our guideline for laying this walkway cut that four foot level squared with the line then we got the six foot level squared with the four foot level so the front of this level is going to be the back of our wall block I'm gonna start building this wall Ben's getting Chip Stone ready over here because he's gonna start laying in some pavers down at the bottom and once I have this first row of block in that'll be our first step that's going to be our first riser for this transition in front of the driveway and once that rises in place we'll be able to know exactly where we have to be with our pavers so that Benny can start grading and setting in our screed rails to start laying the walkway so if you're a new viewer and you're wondering what this open grade base or the clear stone is and you haven't seen many people use it check out my channel I have a lot of videos explaining it but it's pretty much an an open Clean Stone there's no fines in it and that allows water to travel through it freely and I use it for the base of any of my concrete wall block applications like steps or retaining walls and what it does is it keeps it free of any water so when the winter comes and it gets below freezing this material doesn't shift or heave as much as a dense grade gravel or some people call it class five when you have fines in with your base material the water holds on to it and it moves a lot more than this clean Stone all right our first steps in there'll be a cap on top of that so it'll be another three inches higher but we're going to be putting this on hold for now because we've got our Benchmark and now we can get this whole walkway here graded and uh set up our screed rails so we can start laying pavers on this in this walkway area foreign [Applause] you want to get a uh wheelbarrow loaded up the smallest Stone you can just leave it for now but I'm gonna get the pipe set in first but at least it's ready if you want to actually fill up in the other one then that will be another one ready what are you doing like my hot dip galvanized gas pipe man every time I pick up one of these pipes did I stand it up so see if a snake falls out now thank you so what I'm doing here is getting my screed rails is what I call these they're 10 foot long galvanized gas pipes you can get them at any Home Improvement store they're one inch interior one and a quarter inch exterior and they're a nice thick gauge steel so they stay straight and true while you beat on them with a hammer and what I'm doing with this chip stone is putting it under the low spots and lifting the pipe up so I can set them into place I um get close to to where I need to be with the three-quarter inch Stone and then you can use up to about a half an inch of this chip Stone underneath your pipes to get them to where you need them to be and what I'm going for is Level side to side when you're looking at the walkway but the walkway is going to slope down towards where Ben was working at a little bit more than eighth of a pitch so our water runoff is going to go straight down into the backyard how the pipes are set so bring that over here travel dump a little bit of it out all right foreign [Applause] let's put the rest right here bro [Applause] so again for the new viewers in here that may not have ever seen this kind of material used for the paver base we call it chip Stone here in Massachusetts some places call it a high performance bedding or HPB and some call it PBS or premium betting Stone and it's just a clean crushed stone 3 8 of an inch and less there's no fines in it and again it allows for water to travel through freely helping to prevent shifting and movement during the winter months I have numerous videos on my channel going into more depth about this material and the process of screening for pavers so check out the channel and also check out the description below for a few links to those and videos that I'm talking about how you living guys this is hot travel we're gonna dump that one behind those wall blocks okay just because there's a lot of Big Stone in it what'd you say Bud hot we're back we went and took a little lunch break we got a few things a little bit more chip Stone from my house we got some border pavers and we got some wall block caps and now we're back to end the day with just getting as much of this walkway late as possible trav's doing the trick oh yeah dude he's got it down Benny he learned that quick Richie's gonna be 17. this is nuts you guys are getting too old I don't think so yeah you know I was I was 15 when Richie was born yeah I know that so I was about your age when your brother was born it was it was pretty wild it was pretty wild and then I was 17 when you were born yeah I was just saying that Travis is 15 years old and that's how old I was when his older brother was born he's two years younger than him so that's definitely one thing I'm realizing every year that goes by I start to understand what my father and and all the other people in my life told me when I was younger that you know life just goes by really quick and it certainly does I'm 32 years old now I know that's not old by any standards but I feel like my 20s went by so fast I can't even recollect how fast they went by now I now here I am a bunch of gray hair in my beard in my head it's just wild it's just wild time freaking flies and um I think I think you realize how fast time goes by even more when you when you have kids in your life you know you watch them grow and you watch them grow fast and it makes you realize how fast you're growing and um you know you just gotta Embrace embrace all of it you got to enjoy every season of life every different stage you know watching your kids grow and go through the things that you went through at that age um you know and you just gotta that's what we're here for we're here to guide them along their way and hopefully teach them to not do the mistakes that that you made and even if they do you got to be there by their side to to walk them through it and um you know help them along their way and like I said that's why I'm so excited about having my nephew here working with me is that he can be by my side my shirt trap mm-hmm Palace getting smaller [Music] oh yeah it's all about the confidence perfect coming in tomorrow disc golf basket's coming in tomorrow that's sick dude I can't wait to send them I'm gonna bring my bag [Music] yeah almost up to the first step [Music] thank you so when I lay pavers like this a three-piece design I just lay them randomly looking out for a few things which one is long joint lines more than like four or five pavers you need to break those up uh four-way intersections meaning when you you have a corner of four pavers touching each other creating like a plus sign you don't really want that in your in your design like a random pattern and then the last thing is a lot of similar sizes right next to each other but that's about all I look for other than that everything gets laid randomly nice job hey pull that sleeve up there I want to see the color difference you got this year so far you gotta get we really gotta get the uh the little swatches from Home Depot whatever they are find out which tone you are dude we'll all do that and we'll figure out our name for the summer we'll find them whatever the paint color is we get that's that's what it is bud you're gonna be Rosemary Brown this is a walkway [Music] foreign so as we go into a step or a transition into another um grade in a walkway we don't put the Border in front of and behind the step we let the main pavers run into the step and then continue on to the next step and we leave the Border just on the side it's actually a good guide because we like to leave a good quarter of an inch and this edge of the square is about a quarter of an inch so you can already have the measurement with the quarter inch in it so we're looking at 11 and a quarter measurement for that one is going to be six and three quarter foreign on this side [Applause] [Music] thank you [Music] foreign [Music] foreign [Music] how was it 9.5 huh that's what I heard you say 9.5 for the buffalo chicken finger dinner I actually got it too because it sounded so good I'll give it an 8.9 see the guy from Barstool Sports that does the Pizza reviews he says you can't just throw a nine out there because then you have nowhere to go on somewhere that's better you know that's a lie he says then he says a lie it could be you gave the pizza a what you gave it a seven seven that's a good number that was good it's a good number so now it's time to set our screed rails and screed our top Landing here all right [Music] [Music] we got our eighth of a slope with that being the higher side and like I showed in some other videos the height of the level is pretty much the exact same height as a paver so we have our screed rail our skied rails to have our ski rails we have our screed rails set a quarter of an inch higher than our final grade because we want to account for compaction and settlement so the edge of the square is about a quarter of an inch and that's what we got [Music] what do you think it's hot today huh oh really it's got a nice breeze yeah still in the 80s though I can feel it so setting your screed rails up for that quarter of an inch higher than your desired height is a very important step of this process don't skip that you want to get your pavers higher than the top of your blocks or your block caps and you want to settle them into place with your Hammer if you don't Mother Nature will do it later down the road and if you're in this industry you've probably seen it plenty of times when people lay a walkway behind or in front of steps and they do settle it causes a trip Hazard and it looks very unprofessional so make sure you set them up higher to account for your compaction and settlement but now we're setting up a string line to be able to lay this top Landing here and that string line is going down this joint line of the pavers and the left side edge of the Border pavers on the walkway and that's going to allow me to lay this top Landing in starting with the Border that will make sure I'm nice and square and straight with our walkway below this first step and it will also allow me to be able to just build the next two steps right along the same line of those border pavers which you'll see in a minute here but I like to I like to build the steps as much as I can after I lay the pavers that way I'm not messing around with measurements and trying to get everything perfect once the pavers are laid I'll be able to install the the wall block for our step up no problem at all these blocks are six inches high and the Caps are three inches high the height of these concrete pavers are 2 and 3 8 of an inch so when you lay the wall block at the same height or on the same chip Stone as the pavers you're gonna end up having just a little bit over a six inch step and that's exactly what you want and that's gonna help lock the block into place and prevent movement in the future so Ben's gonna wrap up this paver Landing as I move on to setting our first step and continuing on that little retaining wall we use concrete adhesive to glue the wall block together and to glue the wall cap onto as well you see us using our dead blow hammers to set these pavers into place and I do that on every paver install a lot of people just lay the pavers and then compact it afterwards but I find that that doesn't completely mesh the paver height in with each other very well all these pavers need to be set by hand to the correct height so you can get a really professional finish if you don't some papers are going to stick up slightly more than others or some pavers are going to be slightly lower than others so using the hammer and checking with your level is an important thing it's it's tedious but it really makes a difference with your end result so I'm gonna let you enjoy this time lapse here as we build up these two steps and finish this Landing here if you've got any questions or comments please hit me up in the comment section below I love um being in contact with all you guys that are consistently watching the the channel I really appreciate it every upload you guys are watching and and that's uh that's a really important thing to me I it means a lot I'm glad you're enjoying the channel but um I'm always happy to hear of anything you might want to see differently or I'm always happy to answer any questions that you might have thank you [Music] [Music] foreign [Music] [Music] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Music] foreign [Music] [Music] [Applause] [Music] gonna wrap this up today Benny huh no trap today unfortunately short day hopefully yeah they finish up this Landing but first we have to trim up the asphalt driveway so we have a nice straight line and a square it offline all right so this is another very important thing to do if you're meeting up with an existing asphalt driveway or any other kind of um you know hard surface whether it's concrete it's almost never a perfectly flush Edge so you need to cut it to make it that flush Edge I've seen a lot of installs that people meet up with a asphalt driveway and they don't do that and it's just so noticeable and it's just really cheesy looking to me so we measured off the back of these caps to make sure our cut line was Square as well as nice and flush and you'll see at the end that it makes a big difference so I laid this top Landing in off camera there's a lot of video of us putting pavers in on this job so there it is there's our end result you see on this right side here it's just all open grade stone for that downspout to drain into and that will be plenty enough for drainage but we're here putting the the concrete in along the edge now and you're gonna see I pretty much just dig a nice little trench that's a few inches below the bottom of the pavers fill the trench in with the concrete and slope it up to about an inch below the top of the paver I have a couple videos on my channel that goes into a little bit more depth on concreting the edge of these pavers and why I use it but a brief reason is because this open grade base is a loose aggregate so it won't hold steel spikes and plastic edging strong enough it will move and shift over time so concrete is necessary I just use regular bagged concrete mix 80 pound bags the manufacturer doesn't matter too much whatever is available in your area there are aluminum edge restraint options for open grade base but they're very expensive and I don't think they hold the pavers back quite as strong as this concrete does hello everybody I am back and this job is almost done I'm riding solo today Ben's not here because he's sick and Travis is home because this is just a small thing for me to do but here we are hope you guys are enjoying this video so far this really tied this uh back backyard patio project off nicely I'm here to do poly sand today and uh fix the turf damage around the edges of the walkway got some topsoil one thing I do want to mention is this was a add-on to the patio if you guys watched the videos previously we stopped about there and you can actually kind of see the difference in our border paver color between right there and the existing patio that we added onto and that is simply because when you do pavers you know that every pallet it can vary from palette to palette color of the pavers even if they're both the same color those those are both the same color same manufacturer just made it a different time so these pavers that are on the edge that look darker than the lighter ones will actually fade and um become lighter like the existing charcoal border the only thing is that it's it's fresh and it was um just taking off the pallet last week when we installed it so take some time for the sun to beat down on it for it to wear the color in but it will wear that in and match the existing border concrete's carried up nice that's the only way to do edging for your concrete pavers with open grade base concrete [Applause] all right that's it guys other than polymeric sand which I'm not sure I'm gonna do today it actually sprinkled on me a couple times and the weather's saying it's going to rain a little bit this afternoon and somewhat heavy tonight so unfortunately I got to skip the polymeric sand for the day but the topsoil repairs are all done edges are filled in all the topsoil is seated [Applause] all in one shot and it's got it all in one frame there for you okay so that's going to wrap up this video I hope you guys enjoyed this little uh additional walkway that we installed on top of this patio and how we uh fix the grade issues over here with our steps and if you did make sure you hit that like And subscribe button I appreciate the support and until the next video you guys already know peace [Music] thank you

Channel: The Christian Hardscaper

Views: 485,060

Keywords: paver walkway, paver walkways, how to build a paver walkway, building a paver, building a paver walkway, how to lay a paver walkway, laying a paver walkway, paver walkway install, concrete paver walkway install, How to install a paver walkway, genest grand katahdin pavers, genest paver walkway, paver walkway ideas, the best way to lay a paver walkway, paver walkway tutorial, DIY paver walkway, paver walkway diy, diy paver walkway ideas, concrete paver walkway, laying pavers

Id: c188PtA4WXA

Length: 34min 20sec (2060 seconds)

Published: Thu Mar 02 2023