Paver patio. Start to Finish with Instructions and Tips

all right guys we're back today and we're going to be installing a patio and we're going to be doing this in a two-part video series today i'm going to walk you guys through all of the steps what we do and how we do it and in the second part of this video we're gonna nail this thing hard and fast and show you everything that we talk about today in action on the second part [Music] this was the like i mean you know it was wet all along here but this is the weapon right like right here probably to the trash bag yeah so maybe once we get everything packed in there and locked in and pitching the right way because this was all going back to the house oh i know yeah next time i want to see you do that line oh son i'll do it right now yeah dead straight so one of the things that we've got to be careful of is that we get the sub base prepped accordingly we don't want the sub base flat we want it angled he followed my line i know it sucks this hill's at an angle or something and that's the soil that goes below the base material that's good that works no it's not it's the outside one beautiful beautiful um again if you guys will remember uh the homeowners added a patio and how they wanted to do it first was like a couple feet under the deck and then like just barely to the outside of the footings and out just like a rectangle but we don't want to go around these footings really because it only would have came out to here and there's not very much we could have done to lock them in again blank came up with a little bit all right so let's go actually a little bit deeper than what sam was saying with the pet when we put a patio around deck footings the deck footings can move separately than the patio see the whole patio is designed to act as one giant thing right but the deck footings are not locked into the patio and so when you put a patio around deck footings if those deck footings experience any differential ground movement freeze thaw cycles anything that makes them move up and down the pavers around your patio can buckle so they'll show that flex going on now if it's a concrete patio it's going to crack and break if it's a paver patio it's going to look ugly okay and so since we just don't want that to be a noticeable thing a trip hazard or anything like that just by moving that patio away from the pavers where there's really no benefit i mean because the little bit of extra space isn't going to be you're not going to it's not going to be usable for anything we decided to move the paver patio in that way the the deck footings can act as their separate unit and then the entire deck can act as its own separate thing i hope that makes sense more of the square and then we got a radius coming out here so we'll have decent you know usable space under the deck and then a whole bunch of usable space out here um they went for it so that's how we're going to be doing it look at six inches of rock in there i just don't want to pack the rock on this i'll leave dirt on top of it just to give it some cushion and then we'll put in maybe six inches of the rock and we'll be up a couple interesting right now we're on the top of those pipe right there is that the top here you're 14 14 inches down so that gives you almost 5 inches of plus six of class five so the measurement that blaine is actually talking about is wherever you want the top of your patio you need to measure down so you have to take the calculation for the depth of your pavers plus one inch of sand you don't want to go over an inch of sand plus we always use six inches of base material so you add these three measurements up from the top of your patio to determine where your sub cut is now where your sub cut is you want to make sure that you get that tipped the right way and what i'm saying is if you have your sub cut flat you can almost trap the water below your patio so you want the water at the very base of that soil the subsoil to flow away and then your base material will come up that will level out and your sand will level out and you can have a perfectly level patio near perfectly level we do recommend having a slight pitch to that patio so that any water that does hit on the top that doesn't immediately penetrate through the soil will still shed away from the house [Music] now one of the things that blaine has to be super careful about is over excavating or excavating too deep so if you do happen to dig too deep you've got to be super careful that wherever that place is you put the soil back in and compact it and the reason you'll do that is if you don't properly compact any deep holes that you put in place you're gonna have settlement not in a year but in two years or three years your patio will have a dip one of the best ways we found a dig whenever possible is just to use the skid loader and this reason is the skid loader gets a nice level dig the whole way through but once we're up tight to a house or a structure we then we like to use the excavator because we can reach that sucker right in there and we can pick away at that soil another thing that we have to be careful of is organic material an organic material can be black unsuitable unstable soil or soil that has roots or any live matter in it we want to make sure that we remove 100 of all organic soil a great option and a cheap insurance policy is to place filter fabric down over your sub base material if it's got a high clay content or it's in a high water area or moisture area if you put down permeable filter fabric a heavy duty filter fabric over the top of that as a separation that almost acts like a giant snowshoe or a bridge so that when you put your base material on you're not getting separation so you don't get penetration from your base material into your sub base material in any certain holes because if you have a spongy spot in the ground that can lead to a divot even if you've taken all the necessary precautions and then that can lead to future settlement so if you have questionable soils don't feel don't hesitate to put down some filter fabric over your sub base material to separate your base from your sub base and i know that's a lot of information but i hope that's clear [Music] now the papers that we use on this project and we've always used for the last 20 plus years or willow creek and the reason we use them as they've always delivered consistent reliable dependable products we've never had an issue once with any willow creek product period so if it ain't broke don't fix it but part of the problem is a lot of you guys are watching my videos and you're starting to order the versa lock standard unit retaining walls and you're starting to order the willow creek pavers and these guys are starting to run out so for our jobs this year we've had to actually it's right now it's uh september we've had to order all of the materials for our our entire year just to assure that we'll have materials for our projects because they are legitimately running out of products this year and a lot of places are also experiencing shortages construction shortages now on the next video i'm doing a lot of talk in this one guys because i want to just fill you guys up with as much information as possible so we're going to do this this square part of the under part of this patio start to finish and then on the next one i'm gonna shut up and we're gonna walk you through all of these steps without interruption without anything it's just gonna be go go go go [Music] this material right here that we're shoveling out is recycled class five and what they've done is they've taken concrete ground it up and then it's got the fines and everything in it yeah i mean we'll find sometimes asphalt chunks or maybe even little pieces of glass in it or you know it's rebar metal steel but it packs so tight it's called again recycled class five and it's also permeable and so it doesn't look permeable but it is a hundred percent permeable don't ask me the physics of it i just know that it is permeable it's been specked on drain tile jobs massive projects that we've undertaken so we feel real comfortable putting it under a patio knowing that it will allow the water to drain through it and it hit that sub base and that sub base is what shedding so that's our shed layer remember so i want to stress we've got the sub base like this we've got our recycle class five perfectly level and then our one inch of sand is perfectly level but we do put just a tiny bit of a a kick just a tiny bit of a grain on top of that paper patio so that as water hits it that will shed as well now here we use the click and drop method and that's we don't just set the pavers down once we you'll see these guys never step on the sand this the screed sand is in place they never step on it and that's an important thing to note and in fact they don't even drag the pavers across the sand they set this the pavers down click it to the block and boom let go of it and once they've got this all laid out and in place then we go ahead and we pack the top layer we'll make sure that we're using 150 pound plate packer and if you look we've got this one by tomahawk has a rubber mat that comes with it and what this does is it levels off the playing field so to speak and it sets all of the papers down in place and now here's we're getting to the sand part of it and you guys ask me all the time you know why don't you use polymeric sand if blaine wanted to use polymeric sand we'd be using polymeric sand but my feeling is there's no benefit to polymeric sand effect i don't like polymeric sand but before we get on to why i don't like it look at the edging do you see that black edging right there that's a snap edging and we pound that in with steel stakes and the reason we pound that that snap edging in that black edging specifically designed to outline a paver course with steel stakes is we're okay with it rusting in the ground we want those steel stakes to actually rust weld in place but let's get back to the polymeric sand for just a brief second polymeric sand is a sand that instead of just using regular sand it's a two-part sand basically means there's two prop two parts to the process to make it work you put it in place and once you have this sand in place you then wet it down and that activates a polymeric agent which then makes all of the sand adhere together now polymeric sand does have a longer life span but when it fails it's a lot more work to remove it and to replace it and it will fail there is no such thing as no product that never fails so when polymeric sand fails in approximately three to five years you it's a you've got to remove all of these chunks out of it now regular sand you may have to do more you're going to have to do more maintenance with you know typically one to two years you're gonna have to look at it you may have to add a new layer of sand in it and sweep it down and wash it off with polymeric sand you can set it and forget it for a longer while but when it gets to the point where you can no longer forget it it's actually a much bigger process to remove it versus just taking on a couple extra bags of sand that you buy from any bike box store laying them down sweeping it out and doing it you've got to legitimately get rid of all of that sand and that may mean uh that may mean a high pressure washer to get that sand out and i don't like high pressure washering any paper patio simply because that you can then create if you get a pin point with that high pressure washer between a brick course you can create a problem underneath it which can then create a tipping effect usually it's not that big of a deal i'm going cut down a little bit of a rabbit hole in things that could potentially go wrong that probably shouldn't but i really want to cover this thing for you guys so we're all on the same page now on the next video what we're going to be doing is we're just going to be working we're going to just walk you through step by step everything that we do but we're just going to show it to you from start to finish and it's going to be a semi-circular patio so you look for that one in the very next one and that will complete this project out hope you enjoyed this i hope you had a few takeaways that um you know i hope it helps a few of you guys with your own projects that's all i got for you on this one god bless you guys go get em and we'll see you on the next one