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Front patio wall

First I didn’t order enough gravel for the ground floor and then I ordered too much. To find a home for it we decided to build a footing for our front patio wall. Digging was the worst part as the ground here is 3′ higher than it should be due to ground floor excavation. With the forms laid we added maybe 5″ of gravel onto which we’ll add 4 – 5″ of concrete with rebar. This is a fun project (and not high priority), but having these footings ready will be useful for when we have the concrete pour as if there is any excess concrete it can be dumped in here. It doesn’t matter that the forms aren’t perfectly straight as this concrete footing will be just below the surface.

The wall won’t be very high at all, maybe six inches max and on top of it we will use local bluestone which we’ve been collecting over the last couple of years. Not sure whether we will go with rectangular or irregular stones (see sample images), it will probably depend on what we have.

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Our vision for this patio is to have a nice shaded area to sit out on with a selection of plants in large terracotta planters etc. In front of the patio we thought we’d have a large flower bed stretching the width of the patio with climbing roses going up the balcony supports.

The front of the house has looked messy for a long time so it will be great to tidy it up. The neighbours all say the place looks a lot better and we’ll take that.

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Compaction, compaction, compaction

This weekend we started the compaction of our gravel. Big thanks to Don the Johnson who picked up the compactor for us and then went off with Aimee to buy 25 sheets of 4’x8′ x 2″ foam board, 100′ of rebar and 32 sheets of rebar mesh. Bill for that was $1,500 and luckily the price of foam had dropped by $10 a board from the previous week – Covid. What a great help you were Don, big thanks.

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So we needed the plate compactor to compact the gravel and to help stop the gravel settling over time. I found this quote from Braen Stone:

Although there are certain scenarios in which stone will tend to naturally compact or hold its place, many materials will begin to settle over time. When this happens, the surface becomes uneven, resulting in the development of gaps, dips and holes

The weakened surface results in unsafe conditions and costly repairs. The only way to prevent these problems from arising is by investing the time in stone compaction. This will create a solid base or sub-base that will hold its form and add to the life and value of your project.

It took Aimee a full afternoon compacting the gravel in the three ground floor rooms and after compaction the gravel had settled by about 3/4″. The finished result does look great, flat, level and pretty smooth. Next step will be laying out the foam insulation, followed by a Stego 10 mil vapour barrier, rebar mesh and radiant heat tubing.

We hired the plate compactor (heavy bugger) from Equipment Rentals NY and had to return it by 7.30am, so a big thank you to George, our neighbour, who met us at DM at 7am with his truck as it won’t fit in our sedan car. One day we will buy some sort of truck or SUV.

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[spfx: waving stick around] Gravelus be gonus

Well it was worth a try.

Over the last week we’ve been moving gravel into the ground floor to form a sub-base for the concrete pour. I ordered about 13 cubic yards which equates to about 14 tons in weight. Weather conditions haven’t been ideal as the last weekend we had temperatures in the high nineties with 100% humidity. Now that heat wave has been broken it’s wet.

We’re aiming for about 5″ – 6″ of gravel which we’re leveling with a laser level. Once we get it pretty flat we’ll hire a compactor to settle the gravel and then start on the next layers which will be 2″ of foam insulation and a vapor barrier (plastic sheet). We’ll pay someone to do the actual pour but we’ll likely lay down the rebar mesh and the radiant heating pipework, subject to a bit of reading up.

We were a bit short on the gravel so we ordered 3 cubic yards more and now we have too much. To get rid of it I’ve dug a trench which will be used for a small supporting wall for a stone patio and I’ll use the gravel as a sub-base for that pour.

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If you watched the video in it’s full you may have spotted a guest appearance from our cute little car. I’ll leave it up to you to guess which car it is. In case you’re wondering what we are doing at the end of the video we are washing the gravel over a sieve as it was mixed with dirt – like father, like son.