This client in Mississauga reached out to us because they had a hole in their patio. When they mentioned they had a hole in their paver patio, I assumed they meant that there was an area that was sinking. Little did I know when they sent me a photo of it, they literally had a hole in their patio. I had never seen something like this before. So we headed out their to investigate and fix their patio.

We began by removing all of the pavers in the area and about 1 foot around the affected area. We then dug around and removed the organic materials like soil and weeds that had begun to establish themselves in the hole. After digging around in the hole we found a massive boulder. We removed it and disposed of it. This led us to assume that there was likely very poor backfill around this house foundation where there were likely several boulders added into the backfill. It is likely that after some movement and settling around the foundation, a couple of those boulders settled once they had room which affected all of the base material and gravel in the area above it causing this hole to eventually appear in the patio. It is also likely that the previous contractor that installed the patio did not dig down deep enough for the patio to find these boulders when preparing the base. This is because the base was not as deep as we would have prepared it as we typically install an 8 inch base, 1 inch for our screed layer, and the height of our pavers which equates to about 12 inches of excavation.

It was interesting being able to work on this small project for our client, investigate what may be happening and fix it for them. We added water to the hole, leveled the existing gravel, and compacted it with our small compactor. We then added about a half yard of A Gravel which was the same material of the base. We repeated this process of adding base material and water followed by a compaction of that material until we reached 1 inch below the height of the paver patio. This 1 inch allows us to add some of our bedding material on top of the base and begin to lay and level our pavers.

We level the area with this bedding material and lay our pavers on top. We work our way around the circle until we get to our final paver and then install some polymeric sand. This sand solidifies after it is activated with water, but remains flexible so if the patio does move it will not crack. We sweep the sand into the joints and compact it into the joints using our compactor with a protective mat to prevent scuffing of the pavers. This is an important step because if we do not vibrate that sand down to the bottom of the joint, it will not reach the bottom and eventually will erode further and further down causing the sand to fail. We then blow off the surface of the pavers to remove any sand and dust residue that would stick and discolour our pavers when activating it with water. Then we spray water using a hose with a shower setting and following the manufacturer’s directions.

With that our client is left with a fixed patio and a hole that is no longer there.