Paver patios

We dig to the depth the surface needs rather than stopping when the shovel hits something firm. Hitting firm material four inches down is not a base, it is a shelf, and the soft ground around it is where the settlement comes from. Topsoil and anything organic comes out, because it loses volume as it breaks down and takes the patio with it.

A plate compactor only transmits energy a limited distance into loose stone. Eight inches placed at once gives a firm crust over four inches of loose material that consolidates later under your furniture. We place it in lifts and compact each one before the next goes down, so the finished base behaves as a single mass. This is the most commonly skipped step in the trade and the most expensive one to skip.

Much of this county is clay or clay loam. Put stone straight onto it and over a few wet seasons the clay works up into the voids and the stone works down into the clay, and the base loses the interlock that made it a base. A separation layer between the two keeps each where it belongs.

A thin, consistent bedding course screeded to grade is what lets each unit sit at the right height without being tapped into place individually. Layout starts from the line that matters most — usually the house, sometimes a sightline — so cuts land where they are least visible rather than along the front edge.

A paver field has no tensile strength; it holds its pattern because every unit is wedged against its neighbours. Restraint at the perimeter stops the outside row creeping outward, which is what opens joints and lets jointing sand wash out. Polymeric sand in the joints then locks the field, sheds water and keeps weed seed from germinating in the gaps.

The field falls away from the house at roughly an eighth of an inch per foot, which is enough to shed water and little enough that nobody notices. Where a downspout discharges near the patio we extend it past the hardscape, because roof water delivered at the edge of a base washes the fines out of it.