How to Build a Patio - Ultimate DIY Installation Guide (EVER MADE) for patio, driveway or decks

Belgard is sponsoring a three-part miniseries on how to install seat walls, columns, a patio like this, and a fire ring. Sponsored means Belgard asked me very nicely. You mean with money, to put together the most comprehensive patio installation guide that's ever been created, ever. But we're going to go even deeper down the rabbit hole than just talk about technical details. We're going to co talk about cost. We're going to give you everything you need start to finish on how to build this. You're probably wondering, why are they both wearing the same shirt? What type of help do I need? What type of tools do I need? We're going to tell you step by step what it's going to take to complete this project. There is no chance I can get all that done in one video. Prep the base. Tell me about exactly what you did to start. We had to look at the thickness of our pavers. We've got a PA that's 3 and 38 of an inch thick. Pavers can vary anywhere from 2 and 38 in thick all the way up to 3 and 38 in thick and in between. So, take that into account when you're doing your own measurements. And yes, I still have my snow plow on and it's the middle of May. I've been a little busy. So, we had to make sure we excavate for that. We allow for the 1 in of bedding sand that's going in behind us and 4 in for that compacted base. 4 in is fine for a patio, but if you're going to use it as a driveway or anything that needs a heavier dutier application, deepen your base material to 6 in. It just gives you better results. That's what she said. All added up, got eight and 38 of an inch that we've excavated out of this area to allow for the fill of those materials. Add a geoexile fabric over your raw dirt. It will separate the fines and just give you longerlasting results. What they're doing is they're setting up to install the pavers. They've got to set a 1in layer of the granite sand and they're using these pipes behind me to screed that out. So they'll take the board, they'll scrape it across the pipes, leaving that 1-in layer perfect, ready for papavers. You're using a 3/4 in PVC plastic pipe. And what we're looking for is the outside diameter of that pipe. That outside diameter is going to get us right at 1 in. What is it, adorable baby fox that I rescued from a fur farm? You want me to tell them not to go too deep on their bedding material? Great point. Baby Fox wants to make sure that I share with you guys that if you go too deep on your sand base, you can actually put pressure on any one point of a paver and because there's no cohesive material, it can shift and kick that paver up. Good job, baby fox. High five. Or just walk away and pee in the corner. Phil, tell me about the string line. What we're doing is we're setting the level. But we want to make sure that these pavers all line up, are all level, and we have the appropriate amount of pitch to allow for water to effectively drain off of this patio in case there's rain. That's what the string line does. Start over. Actually, Phil's 100% right. A string line is a multi-purpose tool that can set both the pitch and elevation of your patio as well as set the course for your bricks. Now, I got to get back and see if I can screw them up some more. We want to make sure that this water has a path to get off of the patio. You can do it using a laser level like this, sometimes referred to as a transit. Your patio should have 1 in of drop for every 8 ft of run. Meaning that when you're trying to direct water from an area for every 8 ft that it runs, it should also be dropping by 1 in. It's time for today's fun fact. Oh yeah. Whoop whoop. Hey, Phil. What's today's fun fact? Oh, Stan, I'm glad you asked. What we're doing is I'm looking through these pallets, and the one thing that I'm looking for is this date that the pavers were manufactured on. See, the one thing that I want these dates to match each other. That tells me that they were manufactured at the same time in the same lot. So, I'm checking the dates on these pallets to make sure that's the case. So, if the dates are different, you could almost get a checkerboard pattern in your landscaping even though you're ordering the same material. Perfect. Thanks, Bill. Appreciate all your help. Yeah, no, no problem. Sam, how much time should you allocate for a project like this? Well, if you've got an experienced crew, a job like this is going to take about 3 days to complete. If your crew is just getting started out and there's a little bit of a learning curve, you might expect this project to take take about a week to complete. If you're a homeowner and you want to tackle something like this on your own or you've got a couple of friends that are going to help you and it helps too if you're all insane, right, Gracie? Who's a good birdie? Yes, you are. Who's a good birdie? That's enough love. I think I Okay, I'm good. Okay, I'm good. I don't need any more kisses. Plan on spending about 3 or four full weekends putting this project together. 8 to 10 full days. And remember, you're going to need a few tools that you probably don't have in your typical tool belt. If you're like most homeowners, it'll take you all summer long. Don't you have better things to do like clean your garage? What are some of the other tools that a homeowner should expect to have to get before they can start doing something like this? Well, you want to make sure that you've got a good variety of hand tools, levels, string lines, possibly even a laser level. If you don't have machines like this, yes, this job can be done with wheelbarrows and shovels. Just be prepared to do a little bit of extra work and probably have some friends that can help you out with something like this. a plate compactor, a concrete saw. A concrete saw, awesome tool for cutting block, but also great for cutting the tips off from your toes and flinging rocks in your eyes. Make sure you wear protection and have a basic understanding of what you're going to be doing. All right, Phil, let's talk about that pattern. Well, what we want to be careful of is not to create long continuous seams or joints. The pattern is truly a random pattern. As you're laying these pavers, you want to use the different sizes in the correct proportion. So you don't want to leave the small sizes or the large sizes out. You want to continually mix them in overlapping the joints so you get a nice true random pattern throughout the finished product. It's time for another tip of the day. Yay. Okay. What I want to show you is what Jose is doing is called the click and drop method. He's not setting the blocks out here and sliding them in because that will mess up his base. puts it up tight to the blocks and then he sets it straight down. He's not messing up any base. That's the click and drop method. Phil, I want to talk about two different techniques that are being used in the industry. Pre-ompacting the 1-in sandbed or leaving it loose. I don't recommend pre-ompacting the 1in sand bed. This sand put in uncompacted is going to allow us to come back after the pavers are installed and do what we call bedding the pavers. So by compacting the pavers on top, it's going to take this sand and work it up into the first bottom third of this joint. What that's going to do is create tight interlock amongst each paver relative to the other one. And it's going to create strength in this pa system even before the polymer joint sand goes in. So, we don't recommend pre-ompacting the the bedding sand at all. Phil, we want to talk about the edge restraint. Okay. So, we have a couple different options in terms of put what type of edge restraint to put in. First, let's note that the purpose of this edge restraint is to create a method to hold all these pavers in place. If this edge restraint were to ever fail, this paver system is going to begin to separate and it's going to lead to a failure in the pavers. This tip is to use steel spikes. What we want is we actually want these spikes to rust. When they rust, they're going to create almost like a weld against this edge restraint, holding this in place forever. Forever. Ever to do they part? Phil, show me the difference between a soldier course and a sailor course. Okay, so we have a couple options on how to border this patio. The way we have it laid out now is called a sailor course. This is where we take the PA and we set it parallel to the field pattern which is inner part of the patio. So sailor course running along its length. If I were to take one piece of this PA, let's say this rectangle for instance, and set it up and run a line of rectangles set perpendicular to this field, that would be called soldier course. So soldier course set perpendicular, a sailor course set parallel. Each of them you have to figure out ahead of time what you're going to do because it affects your material quantities. All right. Another fun thing that you can do with the soldier or sailor course is change the color. You can highlight a color from the house. You can bring it down to the patio or you can pull the color out of the patio and make a solid color on the outside of this. It really makes your patio area pop. And if you want to define different areas in the same patio, let's say you want a central seating area and then you want a pathway going off, you just put the sailor course around the areas that you want to define so that you can differentiate one spot from another spot. All right. So, we're not using a typical sand. We're actually using a polyme sand. So, that means the patio has to be bone dry. We can't have any moisture on it because once this sand is exposed to water, it activates. Sometimes you'll see people using the actual granite sand that was used as the bedding sand. In some commercial applications, this is an approved installation process, but I don't recommend it. This polymer sand is going to create interlock. It's going to not wash out because once that polymer sets, it hardens like a mortar, but it can still be worked out of the joint if you ever have to come in and make a repair. And it's not going to allow weeds to grow in it. Hey, dirt monkey, I thought you didn't like poly sand. No. What I don't like is people mistake it for a one and you're done. They feel that if they use polymer sand, they never have to do maintenance on their deck again. Nothing could be further from the truth. It will eventually crack, chunk, and break. So, they just finished packing the patio and now they've got to re- sweep the joint spaces in because of the settlement. They are not watering and activating this joint sand yet. Not until everything is absolutely complete. This is the mid-stage. What you're going to notice is as he's packing it, the sand is now going to settle. They've got to reapply it and bring it back up to the top and then compact it again. You have to remove 100% of all sand from the PA patio before you wet it and activate it or it will remain there for all time. A blower is a great tool to remove this as a possibility. You lightly dust off the patio and you're good to go. The guys are now eating lunch on a patio that wasn't there 3 hours ago. And what we're doing right now is activating the poly sand. A light watering is all you need to activate the polymer sand. In fact, if you douse it, that extra water is going to weaken the longevity of that compound. All right, so we just got done installing our beautiful patio seat wall, column, fire ring. But nothing leaves a worse taste in a homeowner's mouth than you leave the site unfinished without fixing everything that you destroyed on the way in. That's right. And the time to think about this is on the front end of the project. At the very first meeting with the homeowner, you want to be thinking of how you're going to leave this site looking better than the way you found it. You can see the guys over here working. This is their tracks where they came in and out. They're taking the time to resaw that. But these are all things that you think about before the project began. You don't want to be leaving this job site and you put all this work into this beautiful project to leave dissatisfaction in how you complete the whole project site. So, by laying the side, by paying attention to these smaller details, you're going to leave yourself with a very happy customer and you're going to set yourself up for referrals down the road. All right, let's get through the technical and cost breakdown of this job site. And I'm going to go a little Rainman on you here for a moment. The patio itself was 16x6 ft or 256 ft. There were two seat walls. Each seaw wall was 12t long, but they're double-sided, meaning that you have 24 exposed square feet for a combined total of 48 square ft. There were three columns. Each column is approximately 15 square ft for a combined total of 45 square ft. You're going to need to import 9 tons of base material and that's considered class 5 or crusher stone depending on what part of the country you're in. You're also going to need another 1.5 tons of granite bedding sand to complete this project. You'll need nine bags of poly sand. The combined total of all the materials is $3,630. If you're a contractor and you're going to do an estimate for a homeowner, you should give them an estimate totaling somewhere between 12 and $15,000 for this job. But that's also going to include the necessary sod to repair the trails coming in and out and any other finished landscaping. Yeah, definitely. Yeah. Now, big thank you to Bellgard for sponsoring this three-part miniseries. Let them know what you guys want to see next in the comments