Outdoor living
Paver Patios and Walkways
Unilock pavers and natural stone laid on a base built for clay, set to fall away from the house, with seat walls and fire features where the room wants them.
Chapter 01
The base is the patio
A paver field is only as good as what is under it. Excavation to depth, a compacted aggregate base, then a screeded bedding layer that the pavers are set into. Sunken corners, rocking pavers and puddles that sit for two days after rain are base failures showing through the surface. The pavers themselves are almost never the problem.
Kansas clay makes this less forgiving than it is in sandier ground, because it holds water and moves as it takes it on and gives it up. Compaction in layers is what stops that movement reaching the surface.
Paver patio with a built in gas fire pit, outdoor sofa seating and stone seat walls
Getting water off it, and away from the house
Every patio gets a fall, and that fall is set from the site evaluation rather than judged by eye on the day. The pitch has to move water off the surface without being steep enough to feel like a slope under a table.
Where the water goes after that matters just as much. Falling a patio neatly into a foundation, a neighbour's line or the bottom of a garden that already sits wet solves one problem and buys another.
Chapter 03
Edge restraint and joint sand
Two details keep a paver field tight for years. Edge restraint stops the outer courses creeping outward under traffic, which is what starts the gaps that everything else follows. Joint sand fills the gaps so the pavers lock against each other and load spreads across the field rather than sitting on one unit.
Weeds in a paver patio are almost always a joint problem rather than a seed problem. Keep the joints full and there is nowhere for anything to root.
Laying out a room, not a slab
The patios worth building are the ones laid out around how people actually sit. Seat walls at real sitting height rather than decorative kerbs, steps where the grade changes, a border course that gives the field an edge, and a fire pit or fireplace if the space is going to be used in October as well as June.
Walkways get the same treatment. A path wide enough for two people to walk side by side, set to a line that follows where people already cut across the grass.
Unilock and Belgard authorised contractor. ICPI Certified Installer.
Outdoor living
Patios are priced off the base, not the paver
Two quotes for the same square footage can differ by a lot, and the difference is nearly always what is happening under the surface. Ask anyone quoting your patio how deep the base goes and how it is compacted.
Call the Auburn office on (785) 256-7300, or request a consultation and someone will come and walk the property with you.