Technically, I guess Measurement need to be indexed as a separate stage earlier than Excavation, but as it turned out, the measurements we took affected the digging method and, in fact, ended up turning it right into a combination of digging out and building up. So I'm lumping all 3 degrees collectively.
You see, our handy patio manual explains that to create a basis in your patio, you need to excavate the complete region to a depth of 7 inches. Sounds clean enough. However, there are a couple of additional parameters: first, you need the patio to slope barely away from the residence, at a charge of about one area-inch of drop in line with foot of period, in order that water will run off. And second, for the same motive, you want the floor of the patio to be barely above, or at the least no lower than, floor stage. Now, in case you're starting with a nice stage floor, this is straightforward enough: you just dig barely deeper at the a protracted manner facet than at the close to aspect. But in case you're trying to construct a patio this is only barely sloped in a backyard that already slopes considerably in two particular commands, you could run into headaches.
This picture can give you a rough idea of the problem. The four corners of the patio should be right next to the door, right below the window, and about ten feet out from each of those points. The problem is that the ground slopes down from the window to the door, and slopes even more steeply heading outward from the house. For drainage reasons, the patio couldn't be below ground level at the window, and for more obvious reasons, it couldn't be above ground level at the door. And while having the patio slope away from the house was fine, the appropriate amount of slope for its size would be about 2.5 inches—but the actual difference in ground level was more like 7 inches on the window side and more than 10 inches on the door side.
So how did we restore the problem? Well, you be aware how, in the photograph, the turf within the foreground appears form of like stacked blocks, in choice to a smooth slope? That's because it's far.
Actually, we'd already been thinking about how we'd deal with a 2nd hassle within the excavation phase of this assignment: wherein to put all of the dust we might be digging up. And due to the fact the pinnacle layer of dirt that we removed turned into in the shape of fine, neat rectangles of turf, Brian came up with the concept of stacking those blocks around the edges of the patio to make a wall, in order that the four corners of the patio might be towards diploma. In specific phrases, rather than digging all the manner down to a good depth of seven inches, we might be constructing up the edges within the areas in which the floor diploma became too low. We made the wall most proper at the threshold of the patio, then steadily dropped off its height because it prolonged outward into the yard, as you could see right right here. So Stage 3 of the Patio Project ended up being not just excavation, but also terraforming.
This concept type of killed 3 birds with one stone. It solved our slope trouble, it gave us a use for the excess squares of sod, and incredible of all, it reduced the quantity of dust that we really needed to eliminate to get right all the way down to the recommended 7-inch intensity. Which grew to grow to be out to be a superb difficulty, because while doing away with and stacking the blocks of turf end up difficult paintings, it become a picnic in comparison to digging out the clay subsoil beneath. The how-to-make-a-patio courses all in reality gloss over this a part of the method, blithely saying,
So, with the combination of rain delays on Monday, the added work of stacking sod bricks, and the heavy-duty soil we had to bore through, it took us until around noon today just to finish this stage of the project. But we finally did get the entire hole dug out and lined with garden fabric, held down with metal staples that look like miniature cricket wickets. (Our soil is so dense that even pounding the staples in was a challenge; Brian kept hitting places where they simply refused to be driven into the ground, even by a blow from an eight-pound hammer. He finally ended up moving them around until he hit a spot soft enough to push them in.) The bit of rubble that was left over from the concrete pad we broke up last week got shoved out to the edges—particularly the far right corner, which ended up being lower than the rest of the hole even though we'd removed nothing except the outer turf. We figured the bits of concrete would add a little bulk to help build up the foundation in that area.
And there you have it: a big hole in the ground, ready to be filled with gravel and stone dust from the massive pile sitting out in our driveway. Stay tuned for the next exciting episode of The Patio Project, when you'll hear Amy say, "You load four and a half tons and what do you get...."
