Base first, pavers last

What holds a paver drive up

The pavers are the last thing that goes in. Everything before them decides how the drive looks in a few years. We dig out to depth first, deeper on a driveway than most folks expect, then compact the dirt underneath before a shovel of base goes back. Crushed base comes next, in lifts, each one run with a plate compactor. Dump it all in one thick layer and only the top gets tight. Then the bedding course. Screeded flat, same thickness the whole way.

The bedding course is where most jobs go bad. It's a setting bed. Guys use it to level out a dip they left in the base, and that spot sinks the first time a loaded truck rolls over it. Takes the pattern down with it. So we run a string line over the base before a single paver comes off the pallet. If it's low, we fix it in base. That's where the fix belongs.

Edges are what people forget. A field of pavers with nothing holding the perimeter creeps out every time a tire turns on it, joints open up, and the whole pattern goes crooked from the outside in. Slow, then all at once. So the edge restraint gets spiked into compacted base, never into loose fill, and the cut pieces get cut to fit tight. No packing gaps with sand. Then the joint sand goes in and gets vibrated down. We top it off again after it settles.

• Subgrade compacted before any base goes down
• Crushed base compacted in lifts, not one dump
• Bedding course screeded, never used to fill dips
• Edge restraint spiked into base, not loose fill
• Joint sand vibrated in, then topped off

Sand, water and what the ground does

Dig anywhere around here and you're in sand. That's good and bad. Water drains through it quick, so a paver drive on a real base handles an August storm better than most slabs do. But loose sand moves when water moves through it. One hard afternoon can pull a shocking amount of bedding out from under an edge that isn't locked down. Up north they're fighting clay that swells. Down here we're fighting sand that walks off.

We look at the grade before we look at the pattern. Where's the water landing, where does it want to go, what's downhill of it. A drive that pitches back toward the garage is something you notice once a year and hate every time it rains hard. Downspouts dumping on one corner of a walkway will wash those joints empty in a season or two. The answer's fall built into the surface and somewhere for the water to run. Sweeping more sand in next spring won't touch it.

When a paver job goes bad here, the tire tracks tell you first. Two shallow ruts. Then a dip where somebody backfilled a trench and never compacted it. Then a low corner under the downspout. Then a wandering edge with weeds in the open joints. All of that is a base problem wearing a paver costume. Sand on top won't fix any of it. The repair happens underneath, which is why most of our time on a job gets spent on ground you'll never see again once we're done.

Block work starts under the ground

Block sits on a footing or it doesn't stay straight. So we trench down to soil that'll bear the load, form it up, drop steel in, and pour. Level matters here more than anywhere. Every course above copies the first one, so a first course that's off is off all the way to the top. Start a wall on sand, or on some old slab that happened to be there, and it'll tell on you inside a couple of wet seasons. Stair step crack, running up through the joints.

Above the footing, steel comes up out of the pour and runs through the cells. Those cells get filled solid. How much steel and how much grout depends on how tall the wall is and what it's holding back, so a knee wall around a patio and a retaining wall taking a grade change aren't the same build at all. Wind load counts on anything tall that stands free. So does water. Saturated sand behind a wall pushes way harder than people figure.

A retaining wall needs a way to let water out. Weep holes through the face, or a drainage course behind it. Otherwise you've built a dam, and dams give out at the bottom. Columns are their own animal. Cells filled, every course plumb, because a column that leans reads from the street before you're even out of the car. Block can stay bare or go up ready for a finish coat later, whatever matches the house you've already got.

Setting pavers against a block house

Most houses around here are block with stucco, sitting on a slab at grade. No basements anywhere. So the finished height of whatever you set next to that house is a real decision. Pavers that end up higher than the slab edge hold water against the wall and against the door threshold, and every storm gives that water another shot at getting inside. We keep the surface below that line and pitch it away from the house. Boring work. It's also the whole ballgame.

Older streets closer to town run narrow drives, some still the original two strip ribbons, and the houses sit tight enough that getting a machine into the back yard is half the planning. Out toward Riverview and Valrico it's the opposite. Wide apron, and a public sidewalk cutting right through the drive on its way to the garage slab. Wherever the paver field meets that sidewalk or an existing apron, we cut the edge and set it flush. A lip there is what somebody catches a toe on.

Roots are the other one. Live oaks in the older neighborhoods send roots out shallow and wide, and a root under a paver walk will lift it into a trip hazard sooner or later. Sometimes we move the path around it. Other times it gets handled down in the base. And now and then the honest answer is the tree wins, so the walk goes somewhere else. You'll hear that in the yard at the estimate, both of us looking at the same tree. Before the pallets ever land on your lawn.

The joints, and the first year

Joint sand drops in the first few rains. That's normal. Water and tires pull it down into the joints, so the surface wants a top up once it's had a real storm on it. Full joints are what lock each paver against the ones around it. A starved joint is where the movement starts. And fire ants will push sand up through an open joint, which nobody warns you about until it's happening on the walkway you just paid for.

A few weeks in, new pavers sometimes haze over white. That's efflorescence. Salt inside the concrete working its way out as the units dry, and it's not dirt anybody missed. Rain and sun take it off on their own, and we get plenty of both. Scrub at it while it's still coming out and you'll usually just bring more. Leave it be. It goes.

Years out, a paver surface is fixable in a way a poured slab never is. Section settles, a plumber digs it up, a root lifts a corner, somebody's truck leaves an oil stain: those pavers come up, the base under them gets rebuilt, and the same units go back down. Nobody can tell. Hang onto a few spares off the original pallets and stick them in the side yard while you're thinking about it, because color runs change and matching an old paver gets harder the longer you wait.