Paver patio build using Brock panels

the project is to turn this grassy area into a paver patio with a fire pit we start by staking out the patio and running a string around the Border and then move to digging out anything organic that would otherwise decompose underneath the patio the best method we found was to keep the soil damp cut it into squares and lift it up in chunks we have two water issues one is a couple of sprinkler heads that need to be capped the second is this drain that connects to a gutter where it is it would possibly erode under the patio so I needed to move it down and a few feet away after digging and working on the sprinklers the ground was a little choppy so I rented a plate compactor to set the grade I used a line level on a string looking left to right from the back of the house the patio will be level but from the house out toward the yard I wanted a slope for drainage I picked 3 16 inch per foot and when I Mark that off again with the line level you can see that I was going to need a fair amount of dirt to bring it up it may be different where you live but where I live fill dirt is not easy to come by I just happen to have a neighbor who was having his yard dug for a pool and the excavator was nice enough to give me some of that dirt grading the dirt to the string lines is one of the trickiest parts of the process on one side of the patio I put down some plastic paver edging and lined that up with the string and on the other side I embedded rebar into the ground I couldn't find a screed that was long enough and straight enough to reach from one to the other so I made one using a long board that was as straight as I could get it and attaching to it to other boards that were as straight as I could get those and then we run that screed from the rebar down to the plastic edging to set the grade dragging the dirt going back filling in low spots iterating until it was generally flat at that point I rented a plate compactor again because a lot of this was very loose fill dirt I compacted making low spots which I filled in with more material and then compacted again over and over again until it was flat foreign over 4 feet 3 16 inch per foot will drop three quarters of an inch which is about what I have for these Brock paver pads the process is to lay down a weed barrier then spread a half inch bed of sand lay down the pads and put your pavers on top of that to get the depth of the sand right I tried attaching a half inch spacer to the bottom of the screed that did not end up working because the spacer was riding on top of the sand and it was also grabbing the weed fabric so we scrapped that and ended up using half inch thick sticks as guides and make sure that you're using just plain sand not paver base or gravel I had actually originally purchased this patio paver sand product from Home Depot by pavestone and it was much too granular I ended up going to a stone yard and buying the sand they used for concrete mix by the bucket putting down the pads is straightforward they cut easily with a serrated knife as you reach the grooves in the sand created by the sticks you just hand fill those in I would recommend doing the pads and the pavers in the same day I couldn't do that and as you can see the pads started to curl when I left them overnight the benefit of these pads is that they save you from a lot of digging and material handling you would otherwise need to create a four inch paver base so I would have had to dig four inches deeper into the soil and bring in paver base and compact that then you would put sand on top of that and put your pavers directly on the sand the problem I had is that these pavers are 90 pounds each and it was going to be very hard to put them down in the correct position the first time so if I was doing that directly on Sand I would be messing up the sand every time I tried to reposition them these Brock panels definitely give you some flexibility to put the paver down and then position it into place but I will say that the pads are not perfect they were places where I had to put sand between the paver and the pads in order to level them out to connect the existing patio to the Pavers I'm pouring four concrete Stepping Stones I did a separate video on that which I will link in the description and just touch on the highlights here the fire pit I'm using is this octagon so I wanted to cut the pavers to match that shape for that I'm using an angle grinder with a masonry Blade the papers are two inches thick so I had to cut on both sides and still it didn't reach all the way through so here we are with that octagon shape cut out you may have noticed earlier that I left a gap in the panels and that's because I have this four section patio it didn't require the panels to be completely joined I then secured the pavers by staking in plastic paver edging all the way around the paper pads are sticking out beyond the pavers about four to six inches so I'm staking on top of the mats through them I did not use polymeric sand in between the joints as you may have seen in other videos my joints are very tight about a thirty second of an inch and that product is recommended for wider joints where the fireplace will sit I added a layer of sand to protect the panels from any heat or Ash and then as a final step to fill in all these gaps we added River Rock so here we are at the end I think it turned out pretty well I still need to get some furniture and I have a few related projects like I want to fence off the view of the air conditioners and maybe add a small water feature but it is brutally hot in the Texas summer and those will have to wait for the fall

Channel: Project ReaDIY

Views: 36,814

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Id: DxtbvjBNiaA

Length: 8min 49sec (529 seconds)

Published: Sun Jul 03 2022