What now, smart guy?
Having
started out auspiciously, I realized the patio project was me running against type. This promised to be a large project and let's face it, I am not meticulous.
I went and got another of those
Ten Pound Books - y'know the ones that make everything easy?
Anyway here's what I was looking at:
Top down, here's the patio as the landscapers left it.
That'd be eight inch thick concrete footing walls surrounding a big pile of sand.
This was an improvement over what was there to begin with. Here's the original cross-section:
That's bricks on top of a concrete slab. The level of the bricks was higher than the sill plate.
As the slope of the bricks was dead level, it trapped water next to the sill plate:
As I'd said before, water + wood = carpenter ant damage.
That'd be foam insulation over our sill plate, under the door to
the patio - or an ant farm, depending on how you look at it.
So what I need to do is to get the level of the patio down - and correct the slope. Setting aside the concrete footings for a moment, I'd think all I need to do is slope the dirt away from the house and lay down some bricks.
But Ten Pound Books is telling me that this is not so. You need to lay down a base for the bricks to sit on. A base (the book helpfully tells me) consists of four inches of compacted gravel, topped by an inch of sand.
This means E and I spend a hour digging down half a foot and plopping all that dirt in a big heap. Then I go pricing gravel. Gravel comes in 50 pound bags and runs about $2.50 a bag.
How many bags to I need? My patio is 11'x14' and I need to fill it to a four inch depth. The bag gives me a helpful equation:
W x L x .666 = number of bags needed to make a 4" depth.
Er... that's 103 bags. Or two and a half tons.
The patio has three sides: 1 is blocked by our fence, 1 is blocked by two hastily moved pallets of bricks and (yes) the last is blocked by a hastily pitched pile of sand. And I have to move 100 bags of gravel through this mess.
Not meticulous? Check.
Lesson learned. I shell out $250 for gravel and get it delivered on two pallets in the garage. I ask the guy to put it as far into my garage as possible, because every foot closer is one less foot I have to haul 100 fifty pound bags.
I spend an inordinate amount of time trying to get the base layer of dirt to slope away from the house. This is perhaps the most maddening part of the process. Trying to get a fix on true level is not as easy as it sounds.
I start with the concrete footing walls. They actually are level, but I spend a lot of time second guessing this fact. I pound wooden dowels into the sand, tie string between them and adjust them over and over until they are level.
Then my children trip over the string. And I adjust them. Then they move the sticks. And I replace them. Then they trip over them. Eventually, I use the string to mark out equal units of distance on a grid and measure down from them with a square. I plot the distance at five points across four parallel lines to make the slope.
If it sounds stupid, it is - and the only dignity I can salvage is to say that I knew my first efforts on slope would suck. So doing all this on the lowest level of dirt is pretty much just practice. I'm putting gravel on top of this, dirt on top of that and then I'll be doing the real slope on the bricks.
I expected this to be terrible - and I was right. I manage a grade of a 1.5" inch drop across the 11' width of the patio. Grade is a pretty grandiose term, it looks like a moonscape.
Enter the gravel.
I have an awesome wheelbarrel, so the plan is to put it on the other side of the back door of the garage. I'll lug the bags into it through the door, then wheel them over to the pit and dump them in. A few mishaps shows I can handle about 4 bags per trip.
The family's out helping spread the stuff - and the Boy loves the fact that he can stab the bags with a hand shovel to open them. It's actually a bit disturbing to watch him go all Norman Bates on them, but he's happy and the gravel is getting spread out.
It takes a few weekends, but between other obligations and errands, all the gravel gets laid out.
I then repeat and refine my slope-measuring technique. I snap chalklines on the insides of the footing walls and spray paint them so they'll stay. Then I take an eight-foot 2x4 to use in smoothing out the gravel.
It actually goes pretty well - about the time I'm finishing up I'm eyeballing the gravel and it just looks wrong. The sides are tracking to the slope lines I painted - but the middle of the gravel looks bad. I then realize something that any carpenter could tell you right off:
There is no such thing as a perfectly straight 2x4. I've been leveling my gravel with a particularly warped board - and depending on which side was down when I worked I was building a mound or digging a hole.
I go at it again using my metal level exclusively. It's four feet long and it takes more than twice as long as the board. And it still looks terrible. Having vowed to
do this right, I'm starting to feel the familiar urge to say "Good enough."
I convince myself that the differences are sleight enough to be corrected with the next level: sand. It's not a cop out. Honest.
Then (sayeth the book) I need to get a plate compactor to smash down the gravel. Renting expensive, heavy pieces of machinery is not my favorite thing - but the book commands. I obey.
Running the compactor over gravel is surprisingly anti-climactic. It weighs a freaking ton - and since a full run over the patio takes ten minutes, I feel a bit let down when it's all over. Also, the compactor alternates between compacting the gravel and plowing deep furrows in it.
So much for my slope. I'll need to do a lot of patching with the sand.
SAND. Glorious sand. Last of the layers before I get to put down brick.
Huzzah! Packing down the sand and getting slope has been something I've been looking forward to. The Book recommends laying down 1" diameter lengths of PVC pipe, then filling dirt up to just cover them.
This proves to be FAR easier than any of the insanity I'd tried before. Having two pipes 4' apart, I can set the slope on the pipes, shovel dirt between them - then use the metal level to scrape off the excess and presto! A level slope of dirt. No boards, no chalklines, and no goddamned string.
I doubt there was any need to seriously grade the previous levels now. Whatever.
So now - I start with the bricks. Remember, there are these footings around the outside of the patio - so I (in my infinite wisdom - decide that I will start on the far end, away from the house. AND I will make the bricks flush with the top of the concrete footings.
Like so:
The logic being - I don't have to move the concrete, and I certainly don't want people tripping over the footing every time they go to step off my patio.
This goes well for awhile. The Book has recommended that I use a rubber mallet to drive the bricks down into the sand. This is quite satisfying and soon I've got about 30 square feet of bricks down. I've been checking their slope like a demon. They are flat, they are even - they have the correct amount of slope.
I am pleased.
And then I have E out to look at them - and she points out what happens when I extend that perfect slope a bit:
Like the complete idiot I am - I'd forgotten that this slope will put the top of the bricks at the house
higher than the sill plate. I will have done all this work - and I will have simply replicated the original problem. Oh, the bricks will have slope for a change - but I wasn't going to half ass this job.
-and that's right where I was headed.
So, I'll need to start with the bricks nearest the house, and slope down. This will put the top row farthest from the house below the level of the concrete footing.
Which will mean, I will have to take the top few inches off the concrete footings:
In cross section, that doesn't look so bad, but when you consider that the slope will be noticable over three feet or so - and that the footings surround the patio on three sides - you're talking about a lot of concrete.
That's the top three inches off a 14' length, and two more lengths of 8' each. Last time I used a jackhammer - I just about broke myself. Most people think jackhammer, they think of the noise. I think about the weight. Picking them up from the hole they just dug, setting them down. Doing it hundreds of times.
Hell.
E, naturally has the right idea though. A concrete saw.
That makes a lot of sense - make lengthwise cuts, then cross cut at regular intervals and bash off big chunks with a chisel. It'll be easy!
Renting a saw is a snap. MG puts us on to a great place to rent one. Their first question surprises me, though: "You want to rent a blade?"
Doesn't the saw come with one?
"No. The diamond edge blades for cutting concrete are a separate rental. We bill you for the weekend use, plus $2.50 per thousandth of an inch wear."
Uh... okay. Anything I should know to minimize the wear?
"Keep it out of the sand."
I think of the gouts of sand surrounding my footings - and resolve to do a lot of digging beforehand.
