Resurrecting this one from the dead...
I hadn't realized I never updated this back then. About a week before we were going to start this, the town told the neighborhood they were finally going to fix some drainage issues in that neighborhood after 16 or so years of complaints. There is an easement on their property so they wanted to postpone til they found out exactly what the town was going to do, in case they were going to start tearing up the yards or anything like that. So this job wasn't done. In Feb of this year there was suddenly a utility markout in the neighbor hood and after a couple of years of not being able to get any answers, there was some work finally done. Unbelievably, they came in & dug out 2 small holes , one at the corner of his driveway & the road, and another directly across the street from his driveway, and installed a couple of sewer drain grates. And we believe there is a pipe connecting the 2 drains, that may or may not also connect to the sewer line in the street. This has really done nothing to solve the flooding in that area during heavy rains lol, and I haven't really checked to see if any of the surrounding streets in that area got any such treatment (3 or 4 block neighborhood tucked between a busy county road, an interstate & I believe maybe a river on the far side). Anyway, after a 3 year interlude we are back to this project now since the town isn't really going to do what needs to be done to fix the drainage there (town would not give the builder the permits to put the correct drainage there in the beginning & made him do something way different that has proven to not work, just like he said it wouldn't lol).
The good news is, in March we expanded their driveway & removed their old shed that they had wanted to replace. This is great because we now have wide open access to the back yard vs the original plan of destroying the lawn on the other side of the yard hauling everything in & out from the street. So I told them to hold off having the new shed delivered so I could have all the materials dropped right next to the work area, & we can also excavate right into the trucks for the haul out etc. The other even better news is that they decided to paver the whole raised area instead of leaving that section of grass, which just about doubles the paver area & adds almost half more of versa lok work
So now the new questions with our changes. The client had this drawing made to show me what he wanted with the driveway, and after we discussed the patio changes yesterday he emailed me his updated drawing so I have attached that pic to help explain things. First question is, do I still charge the client for a drawing of the project?
This pic had some other details that we don't need that i tried to erase, but you all can see the basics. The grey stuff is the wall & the bottom left is where we are going to have the steps up to the patio. We're going to do a couple of "landings" with the pavers in them instead of just a set of 3 steps.
1. There are 2 doors that will have a step down to the patio. A 6" wall unit with a 4" cap installed on top of the patio is too tall. Is it ok to glue down 2 courses of caps to the top of the pavers for these? Or do I have to install a course of the wall units (or 2?) into the base to have the cap & wall units end up at the correct height & then run the pavers around the steps like any other obstacle?
2. We have decided to run 1 pitch from the house to the long section of wall, & have the pavers land flush to the caps there. The right side wall will have 8' of wall 2 courses higher than the front wall, then step down (this makes a perfect "bench" as the lawn on that side is almost at patio grade then drops off further away). The left side will have the same 8' of 2 higher courses, then the steps will be there. Any particularly strong reason that we shouldn't do the pitch like that (obviously there would be some adjustments or crowns added where needed to match up to the steps area)?
3. Questions about the steps: The left side wall when going up the steps will be to the same height as the front wall, and then I was going to step down the front wall which would be the right side of the steps at that point. Instead of the normal "pedestal" style of building Versa Lok steps, with doing these "landings " of pavers I was thinking maybe just run 2 short walls between the 2 walls that start with the same base as the main wall. Then the 1st rise would be basically the 2 base courses of the outside wall & a cap, then tamped lifts of the 3\4 QP in between that step & the next one for paver base. The next step would be a 3rd course plus the cap then continue lifts of the QP behind there for paver base, then the 3rd step which would be another course & cap that equals the height of the front long wall. Does that make sense & is the way to go about this. Or should I build that pedestal system they specify for normal steps, just much larger. If doing that way, then how to correctly do a base for the pavers?
4. Considering there will be a paver patio flush to the front wall & draining the "back fill" sides of the walls away, do I still install the drain pipe behind this wall? What about the 3\4 clean against the wall before the back fill area? I was thinking in this case, just use the QP for the whole back fill all the way up & all the way to the walls, since there is no water to be drained & daylighted to relieve pressure behind the wall.
5. A design idea that I thought I'd get feed back for. The paver area is 53' by 12'. I was thinking of maybe putting in some free standing columns at the 2 corners the front wall has, and maybe the 3rd corner where the left side wall meets the inside wall of the steps. Then I'm thinking if columns are done, there should be one on each side of the top of the steps to look better maybe. So then there are 3 of them pretty close to each other at that corner, then one far away down the other corner. So maybe add another one in the middle of the long front wall run. Any thoughts on that idea?
6. Any other thoughts or suggestions that come to mind greatly appreciated. Thanks for any help!