We did a porch overlay for this client previously where we dressed up their concrete porch. We did this using a natural stone flagstone and natural stone caps along the outside. The client decided that they wanted to also add a 6 ft leading up to this porch as they were having a concrete walkway installed shortly after and decided it was going to be lower than they initially thought.
When we are deciding how many steps to install we try to have a comfortable step up and consider the tread length of our step into that equation. A smaller step means that we would install a longer step tread. We like to use 16 in step treads because it provides a comfortable amount of room before and after your foot when you are stepping onto it. 14 in is the minimum that we would go for our step treads anything lower than that and your foot may not come to believe sit on the entire step.
We calculated about 7 in of rise between the initial step up followed by the final step to the porch. Knowing this allows us to know how much that block is going to be buried so that we can know exactly where to start laying that block to achieve the height that we are looking for.
When installing a retaining wall they get buried at least 6 in below grade steps you don’t have to worry as much about this for because it’s not retaining anything. Still we want to have at least 6 in of Base and then we install a 1 in Bedding layer that is a leveling layer of finer gravel. And then we install slabs on top of that that we can then adhere our block to followed by our Natural Stone cap on top of the block to give us our step.
In this case we decided to use Techo-Bloc Mini Creta 6 inch blocks with that natural stone cap on top. The benefit to doing this is that you can install hardscape lighting underneath the cap if you ever wanted to in that lighting provides safety and security as well as it just looks aesthetically pleasing.
Alternatively you can also install a solid natural stone block step in place of these block steps. It all depends on the look that you are going for and what you are most comfortable with. Regardless the same in cell methods for the base applies. We decided to use a dense grated base in this situation where we use a granular a gravel this is a 3/4-in down to fines because we know that this is what is going to be used when the walkway is installed and we want it to be seamless between the step base and the walkway.
We give our base a good compaction and with granular a we want to make sure that there is moisture in the base when we’re compacting to ensure that is a solid when we compact. After that we screed out our finer material matching it to where the height of that final step is going to be so we need to measure down from that. We lay out our concrete slabs in place and we also want to make sure that our base is 6 in extended beyond each of these slabs. This gives our step a good platform to sit on. Failure to do this could mean that it settles in those areas and we also have that basic tension in front of the step as well.
We lay out our block to give us our perfect 6 ft lengths and we try to use the larger pieces as much as possible to give a large rock face through that face of the step. We then had to cut in the side pieces underneath the existing porch overlay leaving some room just in case there’s any movement. We do have to chisel the edges of our step as well to give that exposed rock face because they do not come completely rock-faced the corners.
The blocks get adhered using a Hardscape adhesive to the concrete slabs. And then our 6 ft natural stone cap goes on top of those blocks after we chisel the sides of it to expose that rock face edge. We want to make sure that we do have another 1 in overhang on the face of that step as well for aesthetic purposes but the sides were not too concerned about.
And that is our final install of our 6 ft natural stone capped block step that we installed on this project along with our porch overlay using the same natural stone caps and natural stone flagstone in the inside.
Materials Used:
Techo-Bloc Mini Creta