The ultimate guide to Flagstone Patio building!

hey it's robert from sierra landscape management so we have not actually made a video in all the videos we've done about how we build our nara flagstone patios and several people have reached out to us and they've said hey robert we'd love it if you could make a step-by-step video of how you guys actually build your patios so here we are this one's for you guys i hope it's helpful and informative so one of the very first things we do when we get on site so obviously we got to bring our equipment trailers tools all that we have to make access we have to make a safe and reliable road where we can bring our materials in throughout the course of the job typically we're on site for several weeks and during that time you never know what the weather is going to throw at you it could be snow storms rain wind freezing temperatures you never really do know so want to create nice stable roadway where we can bring in all the gravels rocks patio materials get our machines in and out and not make a tremendous mess at least any more than we need to for the property the homeowner in the community so what you see behind me is after one day we've created our road which we just walked down and then what you're looking at behind me here is the excavation this is what we call the cut all right the ground underneath the soil that you see it's commonly what's referred to as the subgrade and then over this we're going to put our base and we're going to walk you through that so what we've done here is we've excavated our patio you can see the white line along the back that white line represents the edge of our patio so we want our over dig to be about 12 inches about one foot wider than the actual surface of the patio okay that's going to give us a little bit of flexibility but also make the edge of the patio just as strong as the middle all right we're down about 11 inches then our final surface that's going to give us an 8 to 9 inch base and we're going to use a couple different gravels for that which we're going to walk you through all right the elevation of the patio is determined by this existing staircase that staircase is not moving so we've determined that the rise for this staircase is six and three quarters between each step so we want our final surface to be six and three quarters below that bottom step so our immovable point that we're going to measure off is that bottom stair we've gone ahead we've dropped down approximately [Music] 18 inches from that top step and then we've also sloped our grade here our grade is sloped out so any water that does accumulate on it will drain away from the structure this is our subgrade we're going to go ahead we're going to install a geotextile fabric over that and then we're going to go ahead and install our sub base which is our first layer of gravel so right now we're in the middle of installing the sub base over the sub grade and we have this permeable geotextile fabric in between so like i was saying before we go ahead and we install the fabric what that's going to do is that's going to prevent any migration of the rock into the into the subgrid and the subgrade from pushing up into the rock it's going to keep everything nice and clean and then for our particular applications we like installing a one and a half inch clean gravel that means there's no fines there's no sands or anything like that in between it's just clean crushed rock and that goes down we go down about four or five inches as a layer there we'll go ahead spread that out we'll compact it and then we'll go ahead and install our three quarter inch gravel on top of that that's actually what's typically referred to as your base uh so we're actually going to have three different grades of gravel as we build up to prepare for our patio [Music] so all right i can pretty much guarantee we're going to get some comments on this one what is geotextile fabric and what geotextile fabric do you use well it's not that simple so this is a 12 foot roll of a geotextile fabric that just means it's a ground fabric okay this is not a weed block this is not something you're buying at the box store this is a specialty fabric this particular fabric is what's referred to as a non-woven geotextile fabric it's kind of like a felt-like material this material allows water to permeate through at a high rate okay this would actually be what we would commonly use like behind retaining walls and things like that now on this particular site we have already assessed the soil and we've determined that although there's some clay in here is also a lot of sands and gravels so this material the subgrade that's here is going to do a great job of accepting the water that is going to permeate into the base material layer all right so any water that would get in there would soak down and what we want to do is make sure we're not trapping that in with a more traditional woven stabilization fabric there's definitely some benefits to going with a different type of fabric a stronger fabric what is commonly referred to in the hardscape industry as a woven geotextile the downside to that is that's nowhere near as permeable we've established that the grade that we're building on is firm and solid so we're not concerned about settling or sinking okay we're mainly concerned about making sure we're not getting migration of soils and gravels into each other as well as allowing permeability through so that's the particular material that we've chosen for this job but it will vary because we have jobs and you'll see it on our youtube channel where we've used woven geotextiles it really just depends on what we're building over and what it is we want the end result to be these fabrics you can typically buy them at hardscape and masonry supply stores drainage supply stores at least good ones uh you know and the rolls vary by size but you know we're buying rolls that are four or five hundred feet long and you know they tend to run about a dollar a foot give or take so our crew is going to go ahead they're going to continue installing this clean gravel bedding layer until we complete the patio we're going to go ahead compact it we're going to make sure the elevations are where they need to be and then we'll go ahead and install our three-quarter inch base material [Music] [Music] so the guys have been at work starting to put down the three-quarter inch clean gravel that's going to be our base that's going to be what is underneath the bedding layer now probably asking what elevation do we set that so we actually install our base our three-quarter clean in two layers we're going off this stair back here and off that stair we are looking for nine and a quarter inches below the top of the stair to be the final surface of the compacted base so what we're actually going to do is we're going to set the first round of three quarter to 10 inches below that stair we're going to compact it and then we're going to take out our screed pipes our metal pipes and we're going to pull the final layer across and it will be perfect it will be sloped it will be everything we need to just go ahead and run the bedding layer right over the top of that [Music] all right so our guys have just finished up the first lift of the three-quarter inch gravel we're going to go ahead fine tune it compact it it's about six inches thick we're gonna compact it we're gonna put some screed rails on top and we're gonna really really hone in and fine tune that final layer three quarter that's gonna go on top and that's going to give us our final base surface i'm sure the question is going to be coming up how thick do we put our gravel well in this instance we're 5 to 6 inches but we want to view it in lifts because sometimes we got to go a little bit higher than six inches so as a general rule of thumb we never compact more than six inches in a lift but really it's gonna matter based upon material and the size of the compactor smaller the compactor the smaller the lip can be you know you might have depending on the materials and the size of the equipment a lift anywhere as small as one to two inches it could be as great as six inches once you get above that without a lot of complicated equipment you can't verify compaction so for the sake of what we're doing with this open graded gravel and the size of the equipment that we're using a six inch lift would be sufficient they're going to finish this up and then we'll go ahead and street out the final layer [Music] so the guys have gone and screeded up the top of base so what we do is we rough out the first layer that i showed you before six inches compacted it and then we take these screed pipes you can probably see the metal bars that are back there we set those to the exact elevation that we need our base plus or minus sixteenth of an inch eighth of an inch we go ahead we screed our three-quarter inch gravel over that and then we'll go ahead and compact that and our base will be true it'll be perfect it'll be pitched just the way we want it and that'll make the final screening of the bedding layer extremely easy [Music] so the next step the guys have gone and done is we're screening out the bedding layer the final layer we're doing an open graded gravel so we're using a 3 8 clean stone gone ahead and set up six screed pipes those are exactly where we need them within a tolerance of about a millimeter and then we're going to go ahead and take our 3 8 stone and you can see the uh screed bar behind us as well as the street pipes we're just kind of pulling it along and that's going to give us a perfectly true flat surface to set our stone on [Music] one thing to take note of when we're setting this is all along the process we've been keeping everything sloped so we have a one inch per ten foot slope and that extends from the excavation the subgrade through the sub base that bigger gravel that we put down before and three quarter inch the final layer and now the bedding so if you were to take a level and put it on top of the pipes running away from the deck and out the bubble would run up what that's going to do is allow our final surface to drain off we don't want a truly flat surface because we don't want water to pool but we don't want it so sloped that if you're sitting in a chair or you put a glass of water on the table that it feels obvious so we tend to go with one inch to one and a half inch per ten foot that's gonna drain out [Music] foreign [Music] so these are some of the stand-up blue stone pallets that we've selected for this job they come about two tons for a pallet we get about 50 to 60 square foot per ton so each pallet is going to give us about 100 to 120 square foot they come caged one thing you want to always be careful about with any sort of stand up material is once you cut that cage once you cut that band you never know if it's shifted in during trucking or getting delivered to the job so the one thing we always do is we make sure we put a strap on it want our guys to stay safe last thing you want is one of these slabs they they can weigh a couple hundred pounds uh coming down so guys have go ahead went ahead and started prepping the uh the largest pieces so we personally like to pepper in a lot of large stones amongst uh the medium ones and so we've always found that it's easiest to do this first so the guys will go through the palette they'll pick out some really nice stones they'll just kind of rough them into place and then they'll actually go and trace them out start cutting them with the saw for cutting we're just going to use a regular gas powered demo saw we're always going to cut wet we don't want to create any dust or nuisance for the house or a safety or health concern for anybody in the area so we're going to cut wet using a diamond blade and yeah something like this they'll probably get this done uh this afternoon and then once that's done we'll go ahead and level these and then we can go ahead and start peppering in the material in between to finish this off so dan's going and he's washing off these stones because all the rough we wind up cutting in place these are two to four man stones are very heavy anywhere from 100 to 300 pounds and they're just a little too much to be moving from the cutting table back and forth so we actually lay them out we cut them in place and then everything else we cut away from the patio area so as you can imagine when you're wet cutting that's that can be a little messy so we come through and we uh close them off and this is what you got when you're done if you notice those joints i mean we aim for a quarter inch joint those are going to typically be filled with the polymeric sand [Music] and another option could be stone dust if the person was intentionally looking to grow moss we would take some moss spores and mix them in with the stone dust and put them and then in about six months i'll have moss growing uh or if they want a true permeable application maybe we're on a lakefront maybe there's a concern for drainage flooding pooling or erosion they wanted to stay with a true narrow system we'd put a quarter inch stone chip very small stone chip in there and that would allow it to go ahead and permeate through when it rains the water would not actually run off of the patio we have a couple videos on that including how to maintain your narrow patio which my boy chris will put up top [Music] so this is at the end of day one we've laid out i guess about 175 feet worth of this patio because we're not fitting edges this is the fastest part of the patio the remaining 300 square foot that's probably gonna take about four days guys are gonna average probably about 100 square foot a day and then on top of that we got the final day of cleaning sanding uh trimming up the edge that type of thing so probably the middle of next week we'll be rocking and rolling and moving on to the retaining wall and other elements of the property [Music] so we'll go ahead and show you our cutting station try to keep it kind of close to the area where we're working so we got our pallets over on the side this is just some of them we bring them in as we need them we got our gravel over to my left in case we need any more for adjustments we typically will stack anywhere from like four to eight pallets so whoever's cutting has kind of a table to work on and then that'll transfer over to our bench that's where they're gonna get chained or hammered chiseled depending on what we're doing then ultimately they'll wind up on the patio you'll see tomorrow as we go on and we're creating the fill of the patio we'll have one or two guys in the middle of the patio marking dan will probably be bringing over to mike and mike will be doing the cutting which i know he's excited about and uh we'll probably blast out about 125 square foot each day [Music] why are you keeping me [Music] why are you keeping me [Music] me [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] so as you can see we've finished sweeping in the sand we've tamped it down we've watered it in and we've given it a couple days to dry and this is the final product obviously our guys have come around and sodded and finished up the landscape while that was happening but let's take a quick overview of what exactly took place here [Music] so we started our project out by excavating we removed all the grass and sod from the area and we created what was known as our subgrade that was the top of the soil of which the different types of gravels will go on top so we went down from that bottom stair we took the height of the stair which was six and three quarter inches we dug down an additional 11 inches and that was the top of our subgrade our subgrade the soil underneath was sloped because we want any water that accumulates on it to drain out so we slope that away from the stairs one to one and a half inches for every 10 feet and then over that we laid a geotextile fabric the fabric is to keep the soil from pushing up into the gravel and the gravel from pushing down into the soil the subgrade and basically just keeping everything clean on top of that we put four to five inches of a one and a half to two inch clean gravel and we went ahead and pushed that down we compacted it graded it out and then we went ahead and put about another four inches of three-quarter inch gravel on top of that and that's actually what's referred to as our base that was screeded out and leveled to be extremely precise again sloped away from the stairs that one's one and a half inch for every 10 feet and then on top of that we put a 3 8 clean stone chip that was the bedding surface of which the actual flagstone sits on top of once that was screwed out screed it out leveled and made as nice and flat as we could get it we went ahead and we took the flagstone and we laid it out on top of the bedding layer you saw the guys cut and trim each stone fitted together and lay it out in the form of what you see here after that was all done we went ahead we checked everything make sure all the joints were tight consistent just like we like them we aim for one quarter to three eighths inch uh size joint and then we took for this particular patio a polymeric sand went with a gray color and we swept that into the joints we go ahead and we we tap or vibrate the stones to go ahead and get the sand to migrate down into the stone itself and then we go ahead and water that in for the instructions on the manufacturer we give it about 24 hours to dry and then we go back and we do the landscaping around it so all in all this particular patio is 450 square feet plus the walkway that's additional it took our guys four and a half days to complete the final surface and another two days to excavate and set the base all up so all in this patio portion of this larger project took our guys a little over one week to complete [Music] and we used let me think we used including the walkway behind us uh eight and a half pallets each pallet ranging about two tons so we used approximately 16 17 ton for this project behind me as you can see the guys are wrapping up the sod and we've built a retaining wall that you can see in the back there as always if you found this helpful let us know in the comments below we'd love to hear from you as to what it is you would like to see in your own backyard if you had sierra by go ahead and check out one of our other videos thanks for watching we'll catch you next time you

Channel: Sierra Landscape Management LLC

Views: 87,844

Keywords: Flagstone Patio, landscaping, how-to, backyard, flagstone, patio, outdoor living space, nara, flagstone patios, flagstone patio ideas, Stone Patio, how to build a patio, outdoor living space ideas, patio ideas, outdoor living spaces design ideas, how-to videos, backyard expert, flagstone patio idaes, landscaping ideas for backyard, flagstone projects, flagstone yard, flagstone paths, flagstone stepping stones, how to

Id: qgg641Ulchc

Length: 24min 34sec (1474 seconds)

Published: Fri Dec 03 2021