Patio – do it yourself

Recommendation points

• What is a patio. Its purpose
• Materials for building a patio
• Construction of a patio “dry” with bricks
• Materials and tools
• Preparation for construction. Seat selection
• Building patio

What is a patio. Its purpose

A patio (from the Spanish patio) is a patio in a house, which is surrounded on different sides by walls or a green hedge of trees or shrubs. The patio has become a typical piece of architecture in the homes and estates of the nobility since the time of the Roman Empire. Other cultures adopted it. In the USA and the Scandinavian countries, for example, wooden patios are being built, as the tree goes well with the surrounding nature (bushes, trees, flowers).

Wooden patio

Before the advent of patios, terraces were built in many houses for household needs, pastime and dining. There were also just backyards, used mainly for domestic needs..

Today, you can increasingly see patios near houses, of various sizes, designs, and materials..

Patio options

In addition to the fact that the patio gives comfort to the house, it allows you to visually increase the living space, expand the territory of the house and garden. The idea to create a playground for garden furniture, sunbathing, and playgrounds in the courtyard of the house has recently appeared. When planning the construction of a patio, you need to decide for yourself for what purpose you need it. Either it will be a place for sunbathing, or for receiving guests and dinners, perhaps it will be a place for children to play.

Patio options

Before the actual construction, try to arrange furniture on the site of the future patio, flowerpots to make sure that the size of the patio is correct; Consider if you need to arrange flower beds or plant plants in between the tiles to add charm to the patio, or, in general, remove some of the tiles. The choice of the size of the patio and materials for its construction depends on this..

Materials for building a patio

Consider what materials you would like to use for your patio. Design and planning largely depends on this. Currently, there is a large selection of materials. You can select, for example, concrete, slabs, bricks or paving blocks.

Concrete is considered an inexpensive material. It can be used to build a patio of any shape and size. But, as a rule, it is not used for patios. The disadvantage of concrete is that it is not very attractive outwardly. The work of placing concrete will be quite time consuming, even if you order ready-mixed concrete. But, if the concrete is well laid, then the patio surface becomes durable and can serve as the basis for the use of various coating materials..

For people with a rich imagination, patience and love of abstract art, mosaic tiles may be fine. For this, they use both limestone and less expensive material, chipped concrete slabs.

Mosaic patio

Popular materials for patio construction are decorative slabs. It is believed that the best decorative slabs are natural stone slabs. If you connect imagination, then from slabs with imitation of broken natural stone, you can make up a rather interesting pattern of the coating. By the way, such a coating slips less (for example, after rain) than natural stone.

Stone patio

They come in a variety of shapes and sizes. Plates made at the factory are inexpensive. Slabs 4 cm thick, with a smooth surface are cheaper than other types of slabs. They can be purchased at any garden supermarket, building materials stores. Slabs come in a variety of sizes, colors and textures:

• with grooved surface – safe when driving in rainy weather
• with “chipped” surface – imitate natural stone,
• with a patterned surface – like a stone, tile or brick.

The advantage of the slabs is that they can lay out a significant area of ​​the patio in a relatively short time. Plates are easy to lay. They are placed either on a sand cushion or on a mortar. Their disadvantage is that it is difficult to lay out with them, without rather laborious cutting of the plates, not a rectangular, but a more complex in shape platform. Many European countries use multi-colored tiles. It is smaller than slabs in size (2.5 cm thick).

There is such material – blocks. The blocks are the same dimensions as the bricks. It’s pretty easy to work with them. Blocks, like bricks, are intended for laying on a “pillow” without mortar bonding.

Patio paving blocks

Therefore, they can be put in place and leveled very quickly (for repairs they can be easily pulled out if necessary). Due to their small size, it is easier to lay out various bends and other shapes than from slabs.

Another construction material that is quite convenient to use is brick. Bricks are ideal for small patios, and if the house is also made of bricks, the patio will go well with the house and create a smooth transition from house to garden. When choosing a brick as a building material, be guided by the following types of bricks: sidewalk and facing. Patios are recommended to be laid out with ordinary baked clay paving bricks. This brick is fired at a very high temperature, making it particularly strong and durable..

Sample of paving bricks

Choose bricks that are resistant to moisture and temperature extremes. Facing bricks are coated with glaze before firing, making them heavy and smooth. This material is best used for curbs, as after rain the surface of the bricks becomes slippery. In general, the choice of this material is great and varied both in color and texture. You just have to make the right decision.

Bricks can give free rein to design imagination

Below is just the option of building a patio of bricks with laying on a sandy “pillow” without mortar bonding.

Construction of a patio “dry” with bricks

Materials and tools

Necessary materials:

• Bricks
• Sand – to form a “pillow” and fill the “joints” between bricks
• Curbs. They can be plastic or wooden, as in the construction option below.
• Crushed stone, crushed stone (granite)
• Agrotkan

Required tools:

	shovel for preparation (digging) of the site
	rammer for tamping “pillow”. For large areas it is recommended to use a vibratory rammer. You can make a rammer yourself (see below “building a patio” item 2)
	garden rake – for leveling sand
	hammer for driving nails
	saw for sawing bricks (if necessary)
	screed for leveling the sand surface
	garden cart
	patio sand brush
	rubber hammer for adjusting bricks
	patio twine

Preparation for construction. Seat selection

Before starting construction, you need to clearly define for yourself the place for the future patio. Any piece of territory in front of or behind the house can serve as a place. In this case, it becomes, as it were, a stone-paved transition between the house and the garden. Can be placed near a body of water (if available) in the far corner of the garden. It all depends on the purpose of the patio. If you are looking for a sunbathing area, look for an area with plenty of sunlight that is not too visible. A shady place in the garden with trees or shrubs, which can also be used in the composition of the future patio, is perfect for relaxation, reading, games. To use the patio as a dining room, choose a place that is not too sunny, but at the same time it should not be in the shade all day. This patio should be located close to the kitchen.

Many landscape designers agree that the size of the patio should be proportional to the size of the garden area: if you have a small garden, then a large patio (in the entire area, for example) will look ridiculous and vice versa. On large patios, it is recommended to use different materials so that the site does not look too boring, but you should not overload it with all kinds of decorative details either. There are many ways to arrange a patio. The standard option is located in front of the house, in the corner of the house. There is also another option, which is that the finished patio can be easily remodeled. This is a patio that is separate from the house. It is placed on a plot from which the house is clearly visible. You also need to pay attention to the decor of the patio. If you have a flat area, building a patio should be easy. However, if the site has a slope, then you have to do the work harder: remove the soil, add sand or soil (or both).

If the patio is located near the house, then it must be built so that the surface of the patio is below the waterproofing layer of the house, so that moisture does not enter the house during heavy rain. If the garden surface drops away from the house, you can reduce the amount of material added by making the patio level below the waterproofing row and building steps to descend from the house to the patio.

Once you’ve decided where your patio will be located and how big it will be, find out if there is anything in the garden or patio area that is bothering you. For example, trees (which you can use for patios), existing walkways, steps, posts, cables, or water pipes.

Building patio

You don’t need to hire experienced bricklayers to build patios. As practice shows, making a beautiful, level patio can be easier than building a wooden deck..

There are two main ways to build a brick patio. The first, the so-called “dry” method. The bricks are placed directly on the “pillow” of compacted sand or crushed stone (crushed stone). The bricks fit tightly to each other, then the sand between them is swept away. This method makes it easy to remove bricks if you need to renovate or modify your patio..

Another method is based on the use of lime mortar to hold the paving stones together. It is more durable. In this case, a concrete slab about 10 cm thick is laid on the crushed stone base. A lime mortar about 2 cm thick is applied to the slab, and paving stones are laid on this “pillow”. The space between the bricks is filled with mortar.

Braided pattern. Brick

Over time, the bricks can “disperse” if the masonry is not held along the perimeter with a strong border. It can be made from concrete, or, as shown below, from wooden blocks..

For a 150×300 cm patio, you need about 200 bricks (5.7cm thick, 9.5cm wide, 19cm long). Do not use clay bricks as they are heavy and not too strong.

The whole construction will take about a couple of weekends to prepare the site and wooden blocks for the curb, and then lay the curb and, in fact, the bricks themselves.

Once you decide on the size of your patio, keep in mind that you can avoid clipping bricks by adjusting the interior size of the patio to fill it with whole bricks. For example, to lay out the “netting”, as shown in the photo above, the patio interior must be a multiple of the length of one brick or the width of two. If you still need to trim the brick, you can use a circular saw or chisel and hammer.

Once you’ve chosen a spot for your patio, you can get to work.

Clear the area and level if necessary with a shovel. The outline of the patio should be noted. Why do we install the pegs and pull the string between them. Make sure the string is at a 90 ° angle to the house (if the patio is being built right next to the house), and the corners of the string should also be 90 °.

A stretched string is necessary as a guide for digging a trench around the patio to a depth of about 20.5 cm.If the construction site is uneven, start digging towards the slope, all the while making sure that the bottom of the trench is even.

Trench preparation

Fill the trench with 5 cm of rubble and tamp. Add another 5 cm of crushed stone and tamp again. Check the surface with a level. If necessary, you can add or remove unnecessary.

You can do the ramming yourself, for this you need:

• two galvanized sheets with dimensions 300x100mm;
• wooden beam 1 m long;
• wooden block 0.5 m long;
• nails.

The bar is laid on top of a long bar, pressed with a sheet and the sheet is fixed with nails from both ends. The second sheet is fixed at the end of the timber, which will be used to ram the “pillow”.

Then prepare the wooden blocks as follows: Measure from the edge of the block 7 cm wide and 14 cm long (block size 15×15 cm). Saw off the marked piece. Paint the cut to protect it from decay.

Sawing wood blocks

Place blocks around the patio. Make sure the outside edge is flush with the string. Drill a hole in the block 15 cm from the edge and drive in a 30 cm long reinforcing bar (for anchoring to the ground). Do the same with the second bar. Then place the third bar between the first and second, thus connecting the ends of the bars.

Curb styling

Secure the joints with special fasteners or suitable nails or pins. The result is a patio border.

Cover the patio surface with special agrotechnical fabric to protect the patio from grass sprouting.

Fill in rubble, level with a rake and tamp thoroughly.

Pour a layer of sand, level with a bar. It is very important that the surface is level, without pits or bumps. The depth of the resulting pad should be 5 cm from the top edge of the curb. The site is ready for laying bricks.

Start from the corner of the patio outside your home. To create a weaving pattern, lay two bricks in parallel, two bricks perpendicularly. Do not move the bricks over the sand! Use a rubber mallet when laying bricks. The patio surface should be flush with the curb (see photo below).

Laying bricks using a rubber hammer

When the entire patio is laid out, cover the surface with sand, brush the sand over the patio surface so that the gaps between the bricks are filled with sand. Just sweep the rest of the sand with a broom. Sometimes the gaps are filled with mortar, but since a curb was installed that firmly fixes the masonry, there is no need for mortar. Besides, it may be necessary to redo the patio after a while, and such a “dry” masonry is quite suitable (you can easily get bricks, replace them with new ones, for example).

Finally, you can coat the finished patio with a special treatment to close the pores and make the surface more weather resistant..

There is a huge variety of materials for building a patio, you can combine it, combine different colors and textures, use ready-made patterns or create your own unique one. The choice is yours. You just need to show a little creativity to create a cozy and comfortable patio.