What Goes Under a Paver Patio

When people compare patio quotes, they compare the stone. The stone is the part you can see in a showroom, so it feels like the decision. It is not. Two patios in the same pavers can be separated by decades of life span, and the difference is buried.

The short version

A paver is only as flat as what it sits on. Around Lake Norman that means dealing with red clay, which holds water, swells when it is wet and shrinks when it is dry. Skip the base work and the clay moves your patio for you, one season at a time.

What a proper base looks like

• Excavation to undisturbed soil. Topsoil and fill have to come out. If a patio is built on the loose soil a grading crew left behind, it settles in the first two years.
• Geotextile fabric on the clay. A separation layer keeps the stone base from slowly pressing down into wet clay and disappearing.
• Compacted stone in lifts. Crushed stone goes in a few inches at a time, and each layer is compacted before the next. One thick layer compacted once is how you get soft spots.
• A screeded setting bed. A thin, even layer of sand the pavers set into, flat before the first paver goes down.
• Edge restraint. The perimeter is what keeps ten thousand pounds of pavers from creeping apart. It is invisible on day one and the whole story by year five.

Questions worth asking any installer

How deep do you excavate here, in this soil? Do you use fabric on clay? How many lifts do you compact? What holds the edge? A good crew answers without pausing, because it is the same answer on every job.

If you are weighing a patio in Huntersville or anywhere around the lake, we will walk the spot with you and put the whole build, base included, in a written itemised quote.