Preparing The Base

Sorry for the delay in posting. I could give you an excuse but their like assholes, everyone has one. It has been a lot of work moving into the next phase of the project and if you are still following thank you. If you are considering installing a paver patio for your home, I can tell you there is a lot of work to go into it. As the pictures show on this post, I had to move a lot of dirt and material to prepare the base for the pavers to lay on. All of this was done with my wheel barrow, shovels, and the strength of my back. The total amount of man hours put in over the past three weekends has totaled 44. So with that in consideration, plan your time wisely.

I would like to also mention another quick note about planning. As I stated in the last post about the pattern I am laying is a 'Muster K' pattern. I made a mistake when ordering the 3 pallets of plaza 1 pavers. The pattern calls for a ratio of 4/8 stones (4 being of the smaller 6x6 stones and 8 being of the larger 6x9 stones) to the lay the pattern. I made the mistake of reading in the brochure that there is a 70% to 30% ratio of stones on one pallet thinking that there are 70% of the larger stone and 30% of the smaller. OOPS! it is the other way around. Luckily I caught this as I started laying the patio and since there are more areas of pavers I am laying (i.e. the walkway and the border) I will be able to use the smaller stone. I will just have to change my orders to buy just complete pallets of the 6x9 stone. The brochure says that one pallet of Plaza 1 will cover 110 sq feet, but that isn't determined by any particular pattern other than a 'running bond' pattern. So keep that in mind when you are planning, budgeting and ordering your pavers.

OK so back to the project. Preparing the base consists of three phases. Excavation and fill, trenching in irrigation and sleaving, and installing the harder packing material.

I started the excavation and fill over Memorial day weekend. It was 103 Degrees that Sunday and i worked for 10 hours in it! The grade for the pavers are coming off an existing concrete patio. I decided on not overlaying pavers onto the concrete because the finish height of the pavers would have been so tall that I would have a lot more material to bring in and I would have to install steps to different parts of the yard. I wanted to eliminate any tripping hazards that could result from having steps. A little forward thought into whether or not I have children in the future or when reselling the house it could be an issue. So as you may be able to see I got out some wooden stakes, mason string, line level and my tape measure and got to work setting guide lines for the fall of the finish patio. The fall of the patio is for good water run off. We don't get much rain here in the southwest but when it does its usually fast and hard and turns into a river quickly. So the rate of fall is simple, the grade should fall a drop of 1 inch per 8 feet or 1/8 inch over 1 foot. My patio is reaching out 16 feet so there is a fall of 2 inches at the furthest point. This is easy to do. Drive two stakes into the ground and tie mason string between them. At the one end where your existing patio is level the line to the height of the patio. Using a line level, adjust the string at the furthest stake until the string is tight and level. After leveling the string, adjust the string on the furthest stake down by how much you fall should be over the distance it is from the starting point. Mine is a 2 inch fall over 16 foot so I measured 2 inches down on the stake from level and moved the string to that point. The String references the finish height of the paver patio. So from this point we will fill and excavate as needed. I found that the drainage in my back yard was only about 3 feet from my existing patio (resetting the drainage is another part of this project and will work on after this hard scape is installed) so I had to fill from the existing patio out to about 8 feet and then had to excavate from 8 feet to 16 feet. The measurement I was looking for was 4 inches below below finished height. I did this based on how hard our ground is here in the southwest. If your doing this in a different part of the country, you may need to excavate more and use the Portland cement base method.

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So now that the grade was finished, I used a trencher to run a 3/4 inch irrigation line for three planters that are near the existing structure. I also trenched in a 2" sleave for future irrigation for the lawn. Make sure to use some point of refenece for where the lines are located for when you do utilize the sleave. I used to pylasters on the perimeter walls to know where the sleave is in the future.

Once the excavation and fill was completed, I brought in the material for my base. I used a 1/4 minus Decomposed Granite. This stuff alone makes great walking paths by just wetting it and compacting it. The material will compact very well giving a truer level and solid base. I decided that I would make the base pack of 1" above grade so I used a method called 'screeding'. Screeding is a method of using two pipes equal in diameter, filling the material in between them and then using a cut 2x4 with a straight edge and planing off the material. Take a look at the photo's to see what I mean. Since the material needs to be at 1", a filled it to a height of 1 1/8" and then compacted it to the 1" height. I used 3/4" PVC for this as the outside diameter was 1 1/8". This took quite a long time as the heat of the day really took a lot out of me. Remember to take your time, the turtle definitely wins this race. The base is very important to how the pavers will lay over time so be patient and do it right.

After laying in the DG, I used a gas powered plated tamper. You can rent one from a local rental house and it doesn't take much to run one. It is a lot like running a lawn mower. Make sure that you wet down the DG with water before running the plate tamper over it and keep wetting it and compacting it until you feel that it wont compact any more. It will feel very solid to walk on.

After completing this part of the preparation for the pavers, I took a shower and went to the pool for an hour and then had A beer. It has been quite a while since I had worked like this in these conditions. So I was rewarded by having to move the pavers into my back yard each night of the week after work so they were ready to lay the next weekend. If you are at this point in the project, you will feel a little beat down but don't get discouraged your closer than you think to being completed.