The Patio Project

June - August, 2002



A Synoptic View
Existing Site
June 28 		Exposing Old Irrigation
July 21 		Excavation: Start
August 7 		Excavation: End
August 11 		Base Rock and Edgings
August 12 		Finished Patio
August 17


Narrative

The site before preparation.(June 28, 2002)
I had wanted to change the area between my kitchen and garage into a patio practically since moving into my house in 1997. I had originally planned to make it part of the major relandscaping I wanted to do on the Lauella side of the property and the new landscaping I wanted to do in the back yard. That was when I had more money than time. Now, I had more time than money.

The problem was that the previous owner's solution for this area was only partly workable. When he bought the property, the space between the kitchen and the garage was paved in concrete. Wisely, he removed the concrete and replaced it with 18" pavers set 3-4" apart and planted a ground cover to fill the gaps. He ran an irrigation system under the pavers to keep the ground cover watered and to keep the area moist during the hot summer months. This would keep the underlying adobe clay from contracting as it dried out in July and August. Seasonal expansion and contraction of the adobe had played merry hell with the foundation and caused cracks to appear in the interior plaster walls of the house as the building flexed.

However, the area proved to be too hot in the summer for the intended ground cover, which quickly died off in the area closest to the house, which got the most sun. Within two years, I had unlevel pavers with ankle-twisting gaps between them and a thin, 6-inch wide border of creeper along the garage, the only area of the patio that was in nearly constant shade.
I decided to remove the 18" pavers and replace them with a patio of interlocking pavers with a brick border that would tie the patio into the brick paths in the back yard. I would also have to remove the irrigation system, since the new patio would completely cover it. To give myself future options, I decided to move the irrigation system to the edges of the patio, where it would feed drip systems in raised planters (in effect, reversing the previous soil plan - I would keep the area permanently dry instead of permanently wet).

So the first thing I had to do was remove the pavers - and all the other junk I had allowed to accumulate in the area.
Site Preparation: old pavers removed and old irrigation system exposed (July 21, 2002)
The 18" pavers were pretty heavy, but pretty easy to remove, since some of them sat in only a half inch of loose soil. I had no plans for them but didn't want to dispose of them yet, so I stacked them in the back yard.

The irrigation system was one to two inches below the surface - deeper where the sprinklers attached. Much of the PVC piping could be re-used in my new design, which ran the irrigation system around the edges of the patio. The new system would have to be laid much deeper than the old system, though, since in places it would have to pass under existing 2x4 edging.
The monsterous piping for the old irrigation controls (July 25, 2002)

The irrigation controls for the patio and raised beds was a mess. There had been no attempt to build a manifold for the two controlers. Instead, a Rube Goldberg nest of pipes and angles connected the two regulators to the water supply. I found it easier to cut the whole thing out and rebuild with it later.
Excavation, Phase I: Start (August 7, 2002)
I knew from prying up the original pavers that excavation was going to be the most labor-intensive part of the project. I was right. I could only work on the project for a few hours at a time before becoming exhausted. It didn't help that this was the hottest time of the year, and that from about 11:00 AM until 2:00 PM the patio was in full sun with sun bouncing off the walls of the house as well. It was like an oven in there - which was one reason why the original plan for this area failed and I was installing a patio.
Excavation, Phase II: Finish (August 11, 2002)
Mason's twine marked the level of the final patio. I made a little tool of two stakes nailed crosswise on another stake that allowed me to check how deep I was digging. When I could site from the string along one edge of the excavation across the top of the tool to the string on the other side, I knew I was deep enough.

I encountered two problems. The first was a chalky white mass about three inches below the surface in the north east quadrant of the excavation. This mass was about the size of a football with veins extending in several directions and tendrils that eventually wound their way around the wood edging of the brick path that entered the patio at the south each corner. It seemed to me to be the dried (and, I hoped, dead) remains of a giant underground mushroom. However, neither the City of Mountain View arborist nor the Santa Clara County biologist could identify it - and neither wanted me to leave them a sample to study. This powdery mass had to be removed as it was too loose and crumbly to make a good base, but doing so meant I had to dig down nearly a foot deep.

The other problem occured near the garage, where the clay had remained moist the longest. The clods there came up in six-inch chunks, often deeper than I needed.

Both of these problems would come back to haunt me.

With the excavation done, I could construct the new irrigation system. I took up the last foot or two of the brick path at the southeast corner of the patio and ran the new irrigation under it, with one branch going west to run along the garage and another going east, where it will eventually water the bougainvilla I plan to put on the south wall of the house.
Base Rock and Edging (August 12, 2002)
I filled the excavated area with enough 3/4" base rock to fill it to a depth of 3 inches - or so I thought. I was soon to find out that I had not bought enough base rock. Because of the monstrous mushroom (or whatever the hell it was) and the large clods of adobe along the garage, I had excavated much more than I had thought.

But I was not yet aware of this, so I proceeded to tamp down the base rock with a flat plate vibrator. (Getting the damned thing out of my car and then back into it again by myself was the hardest and possibly the most dangerous part of this entire project.)

Once I had a firm, packed base, I built the edging, which framed the entire space with 2x6 redwood. Along the west edge, I used a piece of 2x6 left over from building the deck. I dug small trenches in the compacted base rock for the edging. I used Pathagorean triangles to get the corners square: 3 feet on one edge and 4 feet on another should produce a hypotenuse of 5 feet. At first, I checked the levelness of the frame against the mason's twine, but I soon found it just as easy to use the four foot level. (This turned out to be a mistake, as I ended up creating a completely level frame, when in fact I wanted one with a slight slope to the west and south.)

The salesman at Pacific Interlock, where I bought the pavers, strongly suggested I use plastic edging, which can easily be bent into curves and won't rot. I didn't like the idea of plastic edging, even though it would be nearly invisible and would be a lot easier to install. When I said I would probably use redwood anyway, he said the stakes used to anchor the edging every three to four feet usually rot away in five to ten years. Since I wanted to integrate the patio edging with the existing redwood edging on the brick paths, I decided to go ahead with redwood edging, but I used pressure-treated wood for the stakes.

Ooops! 		When I got the frame perfectly level, I discovered three problems:
  1. The gate on the north side of the patio couldn't open without scraping the frame.
  2. There wasn't enough base rock inside the frame. I'd be using 3-4" of sand in most places.
  3. The rectangle formed by the frame wasn't quite true: one diagonal was longer than the other.
Problems #1 and #2 were really offshoots of the same problem: I had forgotten to figure in the 1" drop in grade that I had planned. I had to re-excavate under the edging (and under the irrigation pipe just beyond it) and lower the edging by an inch.

Lowering the frame also gave me a chance to remeasure the angles of the three corners and the diagonals. This time, I got a much truer rectangle - the diagonals were each 277 inches to within a quarter of an inch.

If I didn't add more base rock, I'd need nearly four inches of sand! So I added an additional 2 inches of base rock, then rented the flat plate vibrator (again). I rented the brick saw at the same time, as the next step involved laying the bricks and pavers, and I knew some pavers would have to be cut to lay in the 45-degree herringbone pattern I wanted, and some bricks would have to be cut to make the curved portion leading to the back yard.
The Finished Patio (August 16, 2002)
Notice how the pavers and bricks both worked out exactly on all four sides. A miracle!
The Last Brick (August 18-19, 2002)
On August 18, I had a BBQ and Patio Party to bless the new patio with friends. They watched as I showed them what I was placing under "the last brick." Actually, the brick had been laid the first day we started laying down the bricks and pavers, but it was the center brick in the seven brick "heartstone" pattern located just outside the kitchen door. Everyone who enters the house through the patio must step over these stones. I had put a ribbon around the center brick so it could be easily removed for this ceremony.
Beneath the brick I placed:
  • Three postage stamp-sized ceramic medalions brought back by Davis Baltz from his trip to the Himalayas.
  • A piece of malachite that my grandfather cut and polished for me.
  • A ceramic phallus I got at a Billy Club gathering.
  • A 2002 US quarter dollar (Louisianna), to mark the year.
  • In the center, a round soapstone box with an inlaid lid, containing:
    • A piece of rainbow ribbon in the colors of the Gay Pride flag.
    • A bracelet given to me as a little boy (and the only piece of jewelry I can ever remember wearing). It was sold as a fund-raiser at St. Albert's Catholic Grade School, and has my name, my mother's name, my birthdate, and my address on one side, and the Pledge of Allegiance (which had recently had the phrase, "under God," added to it) on the other. I believe it also has a mark indicating that I am a Catholic.
    • A medallion given to Don by his friends at Commonweal showing a labyrinth on one side and an inscription, "With love to Vivekan from his friends at Commonweal," on the other.
    • A ring I bought for Don at the Mountain View Afribean Festival a week before he died.
    • A sacred secret.
After I whacked the Last Brick in place with a rubber mallet, my friends joined hands and thought blessings for the new patio, for all who would use it, and for all who would cross it and enter the house. Then each took a handful or scoopful of sand and scattered it or poured it on the patio or arranged it in little piles. Later, I swept their blessings into the cracks between the bricks and pavers, cementing their good wishes into this new addition to my home.


Credits

I could not have finished this project - or even started it with any hope of finishing - without the help of many friends. They include: