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 Category: Homeowners > Landscaping |
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How to Build a Brick Paver WalkwayBy Ken Krysinski Email to Friend
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Nothing invites guests to your home like the walkway that leads them to your front door. Whether you are thinking about building your own brick paver walkway or hiring a professional to do so, here is a how to guide to building a great walkway. Step 1. Map Out Your Walkway Area. Use marking paint to outline the path. Doing this will allow you to see the flow of your walk and plan your landscape plantings around it. The shape of your walkway will also determine the difficulty of the process to an extent, as curved walkways may require cutting many bricks. Step 2. Choosing the Right Pavers. Go to your local stone or garden center and get some sample pavers to bring home. Find styles that you like and find out what colors are available. Do not make a final decision until you see the paver samples at your home. Take into account the color of your siding, shutters and doors. Also consider the material and color of the staircase in front of your house if you have one. Recommended Products: Visit Techo-bloc, Visit EP Henry Step 3. Dig Out the Area for Your Walk. You will need to dig a depth of 6 to 8 inches below the final grade of your walkway. This will allow you 4 to 6 inches for a compacted base of quarry processed stone and stone dust to be laid and leveled under your pavers. Most pavers are around 2 ¼ to 2 ½ inches thick. Also make sure you prepare an extra 6 inches for each side of the walkway for edging material that will be used to hold in your pavers Step 4. Laying the Base Course. This step will require a vibratory plate tamper. You can rent one for around $100 dollars a day at your local rental shop. This course of quarry processed stone should be laid in 2 inch increments, wet and tamped thoroughly. Step 5. Leveling and Screening Base. The most important step in creating your walkway is to create the proper pitch for water drainage. Without addressing pitch, your walkway will likely suffer from damage caused by sitting water. In order to prevent sitting water you need to make sure your walk always has a pitch sloping away from the house foundation and off the bricks. 2 to 3 inches of pitch for every 10 feet of bricks should be sufficient. Follow this rule of thumb whether creating pitch along the length or width of your walkway and you will extend the life of you walkway by years.
 Step 6. Laying and Cutting the Pavers. You probably decided when you chose your pavers what pattern you wanted to lay. Now it is time to execute the design. Use strings to help you create straight lines to follow along the whole length of your walk. Once you have laid out your pavers, you will probably need to cut end bricks, and for those who chose to create a curved walkway, you will need to cut even more. In which case you will need a concrete saw for this step. Your local rental shop can recommend the right saw for the job.
Step 7. Edging For Hold Every walkway should have edging material to help hold the form and tightness of your bricks. This is especially true in colder climates where heaving and thawing can cause bricks to push apart and gap. You can use plastic or aluminum edging materials with spikes sold at your local brick supply store, or use mixed concrete below the top surface as an invisible edge. In either case you will be glad you invested in using an edging material to hold in your bricks in the long run. Step 8. Stabilizing Pavers Use the latest polysand materials to fill the joints in your bricks. Polysand materials are activated when they get wet and will become glue like and hard when they dry. This will be a much stronger bonding agent for your bricks, as well as an excellent weed preventative.
Now that you are familiar with how to build your own Brick Paver Walkway, check out our article on walkway design and ideas! Click here to read our Brick Paver Walkway Pictures and Ideas article.
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