A client reached out to us to address an aggressively sloped side of their yard. They wanted a walkway down the side of their house to be able to get from their garage down to their deck in the backyard. We stepped in to provide a solution for them with several steps, a walkway that was elevated, and lighting underneath the step caps.
We begin this project with an excavation. For walkways we dig down 11 inches. This makes room for 8 inches of base, 1 inch for our bedding layer to level the pavers, and the height of the pavers. However we also need to dig a trench for our retaining wall block. This is because our walkway needs to be elevated to account for the aggressively sloped swale between the homes. We cannot just lay a walkway following the existing slope otherwise it would be like walking on a sinking ship. In order to get a walkway with a minimal slope away from the foundation for water to run-off, we need to build a wall along the side of the walkway.
Therefore we need to excavate a trench where the wall will be slightly deeper than the walkway excavation which would be 8 inches for our base and 6 inches for our embedded layer of our wall block below our final grade that prevents the wall from kicking out over time. We also dig past the face of the wall block 6 inches so that we have base extended past the wall block to provide a solid platform for the wall to sit on in order to prevent settling at the face of the wall and it leaning forward over time.
After excavation, we compact our subsoil and lay a non-woven geotextile to separate the base from the subsoil so there is no mixing between the two. We then prepare our base by compacting it in lifts or height that is suitable for our compactor. Once we have our base prepared we can then start to install our retaining wall block. The wall block is laid parallel to the foundation with the distance from the foundation dictated by the width of our paver walkway. Each wall block is levelled front to back and side to side. We also install our steps in tandem with our wall so that they are dependent of one another and not independent. This adds strength as they overlap one another.
We then run our wire for our lighting and add the lights under each of our caps. This adds safety and security for our clients while also looking aesthetically pleasing. Once those are wired we can then lay our natural stone caps on top with a 1 inch overhang to conceal those lights. Each of these steps are 4 feet long and 16 inches in depth so that it provides our client with a solid platform to step on. We make our step heights 6 inches using this wall block and these step caps which works well for our longer step tread. We follow the rule of shorter step tread equates to a higher step closer to 8 inches, but a longer step tread equates to a shorter step closer to 6 inches. This is because this will match strides much better and for our elderly clients we like to make the step heights smaller. We adhere those step treads using a hardscape adhesive.
Wall block caps are also laid along the wall with a 1 inch overhang and adhered with that same hardscape adhesive. We then complete a final compaction of the base material within the walkway, screed our final levelling material, and lay our pavers. We add a 1/4″ per foot slope on these pavers moving away from the foundation towards the step caps to ensure water that lands on the walkway moves its way away from the house, towards the caps of the wall block, and off.
The project is completed with the installation of polymeric sand in the joints and being activated. This sand is swept into the joints and consolidated down to the bottom of the joint using a vibratory plate compactor with a protective mat to prevent the scuffing of our pavers. The sand needs to get down to the bottom of the joint otherwise over time it will slowly erode the sand and cause failure of those joints. The sand is installed to the height of 1/8″ below the bottom of the paver chamfer. Once that height is achieved and we have thoroughly consolidated that sand, we can then blow off the surface of any remaining dust and residue, and activate the sand using a shower setting on the hose and following the manufacturer’s instructions on activating that sand.
With the way in which this walkway and steps curved down the yard, we were left with a corner of the foundation where there was nothing. We recommended to our client that we install a low maintenance area of decorative stone with some larger rocks to top it off to add character. We removed some of the soil in this corner, laid our non-woven geotextile, and added a white dolomite stone to this area with some white dolomite boulder rocks to top it all off.
With that, our clients are left with a beautiful side walkway and steps.
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