Devin Devine, hardscape artist and consultant
devin@devineescapes.com
Yes, I still offer phone consultations
DIY hardscape/masonry/flagstone help rates:
$123.00 for one hour
$80 for a half hour
Monies are payable via Venmo (preferred) paypal or zelle (add $4 for paypal orders)
contact devin@devineescapes.com
Mathew, in Philadelphia writes:
Hello. I really appreciate your helpful content! I’m planning on building a dry laid flagstone patio, & was wondering what your thoughts are on using a paver base? I live in Philadelphia, & transporting gravel to my backyard for a 6″ base would be pretty tricky.
If you think using a paver base is do able, what would you recommend for layering below & on top of the base? Thanks!
Paver Base is new, but we’ve seen its like before
My first thought is idk, maybe. Maybe paver base can, in some situations, serve in replacement of a proper foundation. But then I remember 15 years ago they were trying to sell these plastic cells, that looked like honeycomb. These were 2″ thick. You were supposed to fill them with 2″ of pea gravel–and they would take the place of 6″ of road base type gravel.
Their advertisements said things like “engineers have concluded that these panels perform BETTER than a traditional stone foundation.” Better draining and more stable.
But these honeycomb products disappeared after a few years. You can still find the, probably, if you really look.
These new quarter inch thick versions will *somewhat* succeed. They will allow someone to successfully snooker many home owners out of their money. But will they successfully replace 6″ of gravel? Of course not. It’s a quarter inch thick plastic panel that you bought at lowes.
The 2″ version didn’t work. In time, the present quarter inch version will have failed, gained a bad rep, and then been forgotten. Ten years later, after that bad reputation is forgotten–they’ll come out with a micrometer thick version and “engineers have tested this product….”
The sales men claimed that the previous 2″ version of paver base “Developed by engineers who worked for NASA”
When they say things like that, it should trigger a bit of a red flag, is all I’m saying.
A final thought on paver base, and similar products
These only serve to make the excavation and foundation work easier. Meanwhile–I’ll do the foundation for a thousand square foot patio in 1 or 2 days. Fitting the stone however–will take ten times longer. The excavation is not the hardest part of the job, in fact, it’s the smallest item that I look at, when calculating the job cost. To really make the job go faster–you’ll need to learn how to cut stone–as shown in the following video. I’ll post a list of helpful tools too, below the video.
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Tools needed to build your stone patio on a gravel base:
- Grabo, the hot new vacuum lifter that makes lifting flagstones a bit easier. My review can be found HERE. Do you need one? No, but on a larger patio it will save time and save you some strain on your fingers. Bigger than 200 square foot–maybe get one. Bigger than 400 square foot–yea, probably get two.
- Dead blow type mallet. Many types to choose from….lately I mostly use my rawhide mallet, but the rubber headed modern style deadblow is in my tool bucket too, and I’ll use whichever is closer on hand.
- Brick hammer, for cutting flagstone.
- Angle grinder. Same one I use. Keep this on hand for cuts that the hammer won’t successfully make, or that will take too long with the hammer
- Diamond blades.
- A couple of 5 gallon buckets for stone dust. Personally I use 3 gallon stainless steel buckets (costs more, lasts longer).
- Pick maddock. Best way to dig. Break up soil with this, then use shovel.
- Knee pads–essential.
- Hand tamper and/or plate compactor. For 100 square foot or less, I’d just use the hand tamper. Bigger than that–you might want to rent plate compactor.
Related Content:
- polymeric sand, another synthetic landscape product, which doesn’t work, either
- how to level dry laid flagstone
- how to build a dry laid flagstone patio or walkway
A follower of my blog sent me this photo yesterday:
Nicely fit stone– I give this patio a passing grade! This patio looks good, and will function well for a long time to come. No pac-men or unnatural shapes or obvious saw-cuts. Cool looking boulder in the lower right, too. Thank you Nelson for the photo, excellent work on your first stone patio!
My work for the day is done. I have protected the savvy consumer and about this, I feel good.
Thank You
Hi Devin,
I was wondering what your perspective are on using stone dust over the polymeric sand, for my application below. I did read your article (stone dust vs polymeric sand) and watched some of your install videos but relating to my patio; We have some flagstone laid down that are bigger pieces but do not have the tight fit like I have seen in some of your installs. We have some gaps that are 3-4 inches or even bigger where multiple points of 3 stones may meet. We did use crushed granite “breeze” which compacts very well with water and compaction, I thought it would do better but my main interest is in choking out the Crabgrass in my area in CO that grows like crazy through our cracks, making me weed every few weeks. I am working on the patio more than chilling on it so obviously an issue. Question: Will the polymeric sand approach end up with cracks and undesirable? If you think for these big cracks and crabgrass issue, that polymeric sand is a good option can you annually reapply if it does crack (basic annual maintenance/) Would the stone dust in the cracks work better? is there a way to improve choking out any growth like the polymeric does?
Jamie,
Polymeric sand will crack, and you can’t just pour a little bit into the cracks, to repair it. Weeds will grow in those cracks, And you really can’t just fill the cracks with breeze–you need to remove all of the polymeric sand. Your joints are a bit wider than I prefer–but I’ve seen plenty patios with joints that size work just fine/pretty well–with stone dust. Poly sand fails at 1.5″ (and also at half an inch….) but fails super fast, with 4 inch joints.
Fill joints with stone dust/breeze. When weeds grow, you can hit them up with a propane torch. Even get an extension wand, so you don’t have to bend down. An even more affordable option, is what I do: in the morning, when you make yourself tea, walk outside with the tea kettle and douse unwanted plants. In a day or so they dry up. The torch is more immediate, but hot water does the trick.
And I hope you get to enjoy your patio, this summer. Cheers
Hey Devin,
I’ve read through a lot of your blog, great info and I love your work. I am almost done with a diy patio using dimensional slate. I’m still spending time getting the wobble out of some of the stones, since they are split they aren’t flat, but I’m nearing the time to fill the joints. I think the stone dust will look good in the joints (grey will contrast the dark slate nicely), and is much more economical than polymeric sand, along with the other reasons not to use polymeric sand, but I’ve read elsewhere that stone dust will retain water and a freeze/thaw cycle could eventually damage the stone. What are your thoughts? Thanks
Yea I’ve read that claim before. Let me be clear on the matter:
In 26 years hardscaping, I’ve never once seen an instance of stone dust “holding water and damaging flagstone due to freeze-thaw. I’ve never seen any evidence of it happening. Never heard of it happening either–only read these alleged claims, and only from people selling other products.
Hi Devin. Thank you for all of the great information you’ve provided on your site. I have a flagstone patio around our pool area that has concrete at the very base followed by a layer of sand supporting the stones. All of the patio has been set in mortar/cement, which has been compromised in several areas due to power washing. I’d like to repair these sections myself while keeping the mortar/concrete consistent but I’m not sure of the best application (i.e. sand/concrete mixture or just concrete) between the joints and how I should go about making it adhere to the sand below. I appreciate any advice you can provide.
Jessie,
From what you’re telling me, this patio might be a good 20 years old or older. Would you know the original build date?
Based off what I’ve heard so far: the patio was originally set in mortar. The mortar has degraded and broken back down to sand and cement dust.
Your power washing may have blown out already lose bits of cracked up mortar joint…..but the material beneath the flagstones was already broken down to sand.
Repair at this point will possibly require re-setting the stones in new mortar. New joints should likewise be filled with new mortar–not sand and not concrete.
But there’s too much I would need to know, before offering my repair recommendations. And re-setting each and every stone will make this into a rather large job, so I want to go over things and make sure there’s not an easier solution.
If you like, we could set up a phone consultation. Send $123 via venmo and let me know what time you prefer. Today and tomorrow I have 6 pm open, weds and Friday this week I have 11 am available.
Email me if you’d like to schedule a consult. Also, send photos of the patio, close up photos of the joints, and a photo or two of what’s underneath the flagstones. If you like, you can also upload a video to youtube and send it to me. Youtube will give you the option to make the video private or unlisted–make it unlisted, and send me the link.
Thanks,
Devin Devine
devin@devineescapes.com
EDIT: here’s the trowels I mentioned, during our consultation:
Margin trowel: https://amzn.to/43lLSoA
But you’ll also want at least one of these, too:
https://amzn.to/3pLgulz
Or both:
https://amzn.to/3OcEmIk
And diamond:
https://amzn.to/44BI5nS
Bonding agent:
https://amzn.to/3pTFxCS
Hi Devin, Your site has been such a great find and I’ve passed it
onto the stone mason doing our flagstone firepit area. I just have
one question that I couldn’t find in your blogs. There are many
calculators to estimate the amount of flagstone needed for the size
of your patio. But if the stone is cut to make nice narrow joints,
how much more flagstone should you figure in? Thank you for helping
the rest of us appreciate the beauty of stone.
Good question. A flagstone pallet usually weighs between 2,500 to 3,000 pounds–but they can range wider than that. If you ask my masonry suppliers they all say insanely incorrect things, like “you will average 150 square feet per pallet”.
In reality, I get an average of 70 square feet per pallet. But my suppliers are technically correct, too. If you were to use every stone on the pallet, and not cut them at all to make them fit properly….then I suppose you would get about twice as much square footage as I usually. First of all–some of the stones on any pallet are going to be too thin, or not very flat, or cracked, or layered–and not really usable. Plus, there’s all stone that gets cut-off, to make them fit.
In reality–all of these numbers may skew. A pallet might have 2000 pounds of flagstone–or 4,000 pounds. the stone could be really thick (meaning less square footage per pind) or really thin–meaning the opposite.
What I do:
I use 70 sq ft per pallet as my best guess when ordering stone. And I plan–is the job a small job? Then I’ll just order extra material. Whatever’s leftover, I make use of on the next job. Any stones that are too small, thin, or otherwise not usable–will be used in dry stone walls, or garden sculpture, any way. If the job is large–I’ll sometimes order a bit less than I think I may need…..letting the supplier bring me most of the stone, and planning to maybe get a pallet or two at a time, in my truck, as the job progresses.
Greetings. Thanks much for your various tips. I filed away the “rules” about surfboards, pac men etc and kept them in mind on a recent project and used them as a basic guideline. My biggest artistic challenge in working with naturalistic dry laid flagstone, is shape of individual stones. Given that the pallet of stone is full of large pieces that are rather square and then beginning. Its difficult to know what shape the stone wants to take, and there is a bit of randomness, or accident that gets the mysterious process going. Another challenge is fear-of-breakage-leading-to more-and-more-exclusive-saw-cuts (haha) leading to some straighter lines than I like. I would be interested in any of your thoughts on this. Thanks again for your beautiful work and sharing information
Certain shapes are easier to work with. Triangles, houses, cone shape (square, but one end is narrower, so it almost a triangle, but has 4 sides).
Since you mention pac-men, I’m pretty sure you saw my post about making flagstone look “natural”. IDK if I mentioned cross joints in that article…I know when I started out, I though crosses didn’t matter in flat work. But they do. When 4 stones meet up at a point, it ends up feeling less relaxed, than one only 3 stone meet up. Lately, I’m also trying to avoid neaby jogs–where it was almost a cross joint, but we moved the stone over so it’s only 2 inches away from being a cross. Going forward–I plan on avoiding nearby jogs, a bit more.
When using the saw often–and wanting to avoid the too straight of cuts look–I’ll usually make the cut not perfectly straight. The line will be straight, then somewhere along the line it will turn, just a couple of degrees. That, or even making the cut somewhat curved (usually using the grinder not the saw). And either way–roughing up the cut with the brick hammer.
The more I take my time….the more natural and effortless it end up looking. Too straight of cuts–and not roughed-up enough of cuts–is a big thing I remind myself, and my workers of.
Thanks Devin. This is VERY helpful. BTW, I think all my cuts that seem too straight happened during moments of “oh my god am I ever going to finish” and some impatience, so I appreciate also the comment about taking your time.