Building a Flagstone Patio

In an effort to save some money, and actually do some of my own landscaping, I took on the task of building a patio in the courtyard area of our new house. The house came with no landcaping in the courtyard, save for a covering of bark. It was both useless and unattractive. I considered many options for the courtyard. Should we pave over the whole thing? Should we put cement, pavers or flagstone? In the end, I liked the look of the flagstone the best. Using the rosa variety of Arizona flagstone fit well with the color and style of the house.

Since I've never done this before, I decided to do the flagstone on top of a sand base, rather than a cement one. After extensive research on the internet, I figured that this would be sufficient for my purposes, and its something I could take my time doing. Mortaring the flagstone on cement might yield a stronger patio, but its really hard for a beginner to do. Sand is much more forgiving.

Step 1: Rerouting pipes.

The courtyard was sloped towards its center with a drain pipe in the middle. This pipe also was connected to two downspouts from the roof gutters. I had make a new drain at the front of the patio, and remove the old drain, all the while keeping the connections to the down spout. This wasn't terribly difficult, but I had to dig down pretty deep.

Step 2: Demolition

The step at the door had to go. I started with a chisel and sledgehammer. When that proved too slow, I borrowed a breaking bar. This made rubble of the concrete in short order.

Step 3: Excavation

My plan is to slope the patio from the original top of the step to level with the driveway. This gives me a gradual slope away from the house. I staked a line from the doorway to the driveway, and began to excavate no less than 7 inches from the top of the line. This picture shows the excavation beginning:



Excavation took several days of back breaking diggings. The clay soil did not yield easily, and required using a pick-axe. For now, I disposed of the dirt in the back yard.

Step 4: Purchasing

All in all, I have about 320 square feet to cover. I went to my local landscape supplier and bought enough (or so I thought) sub-base and sand to bring be up to about 2 inches of my guideline. Because flagstone varies so much in thickness, I couldn't be sure exactly how much I needed. As it turned out, we were a bit enthusiastic on the excavation and dug a few inches too deep in places. I've had to go back repeatedly for more sand.

I settled on tumbled flagstone, which are more expensive than regular patio flags, but are nice and rounded at all the corners. I spent a considerable amount of time individually picking out a variety of different stones, some large, and some small. (I didn't want to make any cuts.) In the end, I bought only half as much as I really needed. This was mainly because I didn't know how much I needed. It all depends on how you lay it out. I wanted to make sure I didn't buy more than necessary.

Everything was delivered to my driveway.

Step 5: Laying down the base

My brother-in-law Weldy and I spent a day putting down the gravel sub-base and the sand. Pictures of this follow:




We used a hand tamper to tamp every load of gravel that was dumped. This was difficult, but it saved the cost and hassle of renting a compactor.

We then added a layer of weed block, and then the sand.



The pipe sticking out may eventually hold a power cord for fountain. It runs from the center of the patio to the socket on the wall. I threaded it with a fishing line so I could pull something else through later.

Finally, we began to lay the flagstone. This process continues still. Each flag needs to be individually leveled and set right so it is not tippy. This is incredibly time consuming. The cost of this patio professionally is certainly in the labor.



Not done yet. I'll continue this when I've made more progress.