OK Let's make Henge's DIY disaster work!

[BRL]

LOL I had asked about Versa-Lok in this thread, and the project is basically doing what that picture showed. Sort of.
Other thread (http://www.groundtradesxchange.com/forums/showthread.php?s=&threadid=376)

So I went to look at that job the other day and have a few questions for you all. In this case there is an existing timber wall we are removing, and some patio block is rough laid on the existing soil & being removed. Wall & patio are 3 feet high. So we want to replace the timber wall with a Versalok wall and then install a real paver patio.

1. Should all of the area behind the wall & under the patio be removed & then base installed? Or can the normal amount of base for the pavers be installed onto the existing soil, except where I need to excavate for the wall? The other problem is the currently not functioning irrigation system runs under the current patio. So I will be excavating to get to that, and have suggested the client have it moved to the outside of the patio area. So I could potentially end up needing to disturb much of the area under the patio. If that is the case I'm assuming I should just back fill with base material instead of existing soil tamped, then base material. Correct? If I don't have to excavate that area, can I leave the existing soil behind that wall, not including what I have to excavate for the wall & drainage? (it may be easy to cut off irrigation before it goes under that area, then redirect as needed & leave what's there, there.)

2. Another question I had was matching the patio pitch to the wall, but after looking at some pictures in a Versalok sales bbrochure, I think I might have it figured out. What I'm thinking of doing is running the slope down from the house & using bullnose pavers for the edge the slope comes to. I'll use a different color for the bullnose (and continue that color for the soldier course) to help contrast the drop off. I was also thinking of installing the paver "lights" (using Hollands and the lights are same size & installed in place of pavers where wanted, anybody use these? Comments?) near that edge to help identify that area at night. On the one side I am thinking I will just use the wall caps & step up half way to have the wall slightly above the patio. On the other side we're putting in steps, so I think I'll do the same thing with those walls, just use a second cap to step up the wall on the far side where it continues to the house past the steps. Now if the client doesn't want to do that, they were considering the wall be higher than the patio slightly. In that case, I'm thinking of using the same slope & just installing a couple of drains with grates at the sloped edge to get the water out. Other option is to cut some holes into the wall where needed? Or, does anyone have other ideas??

3. Is it easy to install lights in versalok walls? I've done them into natural field stone walls & it was easy to hide the wires, & install the lights where wanted. But I'm not sure how to go about that with these types of walls. I was considering putting a couple in the side walls around the steps.

I think that's all I haven't figured out myself for now, but I'll probably come up with more ;) Thanks for any help.

[Stonehenge]

I'll have a detailed answer for you tonight. ;)

[BRL]

Thanks!
Went today to pick out some sample pieces to take to them to pick colors tonight.

BTW I forgot. Speaking of DIY. He showed me his driveway. He had installed a concrete pad in front of the 2 garage doors. Not bad work. However, here was the surprise. About 7 years ago he installed Dutch style pavers between the concrete & the road, and about 8' wide along the driveway. No base prep. Just hit the existing nasty slate\clay soil we have around here with a plate tamper, then layed the pavers & tamped them after installed. It really doesn't look bad considering. I can see some areas that moved, but they are not big gaps. And the average person not in this biz wouldn't notice any of the problems. I was really surprised to see that. I've seen plenty of "professionally" installed paver walks that were way wacked out by the first winter season of freeze thaw cycles, let alone 7 winters. So some DIY's actually have talent... or lotsa luck :halo:

[Stonehenge]

The area behind the existing wall - if it's dirt, take it out.

As for the pitch of the pavers - the retaining wall block are always set level - do not lay them to follow the grade - they will follow it right down the hillside, a millimeter at a time. You need to crown the pavers - in the pic below the brown is the block, the red is the pavers, looking at a cross section of the patio. It should look like this right up to the house.

As for what to do about soil below pavers - anything disturbed, loose, uncompacted or spongy must go, replaced by crushed stone. And when building up a raised patio, I always start with 3/4-, changing to screenings when I get close to the top.

Lights - Versa-Lok doesn't have any made for their block (that I know of), but there are lights made for Pisa that are 6" in height, and can be used for a V-lok wall - just cut 6" off a block so your seams stay the same.

I like paver In Lites better than the Holland lights - they stay in the paver better and look cooler ( :cool: ) IMO, but they take more work; $400 in drill bits and a good drill.

[Stonehenge]

Here's the In-Lite:

[BRL]

Thank you! (BTW The PM I sent you was before I saw this post, so I think this proves my point & answers that question LOL).

"The area behind the existing wall - if it's dirt, take it out."
The area the wall is holding in for the patio is 13' by 28'.
So basically everything inside the walls should come out & be replaced with 3\4" and then the last 6" at top with screenings mixed in for the patio base. Or can the parts lower that I may noit need to disturb remain? If I'm replacing all of it, that would mean the patio will have a 3' foot base (it better not move , eh?), however if this is overkill & not really necessary, I'd rather not take it all out to help the customer's budget a little. But if it absolutely needs to come out, that's fine too, we want to do it right, once, the first time LOL. I'm thinking geotextile fabric should be used in this case correct? So the stone is OK to back fill on that? Would it be OK to use QP back there & just use the 3\4 clean for the drainage backfill right next to the wall? (Getting these ideas from looking at the VL Install Manual)

As far as the patio vs wall goes, spoke to the customer tonight & they thought they'd like the patio to meet the wall caps flush on the long section of the wall parallel to the house. I thought it would be OK to instead of have a crown, simply pitch away from the house. There would be the slight angle where the pavers meet the cap that's all. So the patio would be level along the house, and level along the long leg of the wall. We were then going to just step the side legs of the wall up as needed to make sure the side edges of the patio aren't exposed. Any reason not to do this??

I like that In Lite better too, from the picture. Any links or manufacturer's name & number you can supply? Thanks. It looks like a 3' diameter hole. Did you use a concrete core drill, or a regular hand drill? I think I payed around $100.00 for about 1.5" diamond tipped mason core bit that works in regular drills in the past. So $400.00 sounds right for that size. Or if you don't drill holes like that often, you can rent the core drill for a half day & do one project quickly & easily.

[scl]

Down in my area my distributor has all the stuff to drill the in lites and its very reasonable to buy the brick drilled. They're just outrageous in what they want for the lights. Can get them from an hour away for 1/2 the price. Still have a tough time selling them though. Too many cheapskates in my area.

[Rex Mann]

We sell the in lite lights for $60.00 per. That includes the drilling, light and wire from the transformer. The transformer is priced separately according to the size.

Peace,

Rex

[Stonehenge]

There are actually two bits you need - the first bit you could replace with a core bit, the other is more of a specialty bit. Check this thread (http://www.groundtradesxchange.com/forums/showthread.php?s=&threadid=101) to see what the bit looks like.

Is the pic below the, in a general sense, the way the wall, pavers and house will marry? If so, I'd advise the crown method over this. Otherwise there will be a bunch of places along that wall that will be unsightly and a tripping hazard. Best bet is to make the wall on height, and the pavers meet the wall height flush all the way around the wall, with a crown or bubble in the middle to shed water.

[Stonehenge]

Here's a low level example of what I'm talking about. This patio has retaining wall all the way around, with a crown in the middle.

[Stonehenge]

You can see that the crown is very subtle. Yet it's effective. Here's a closeup of where the steps on the patio meet the house, so you can see the crown up close:

[Stonehenge]

See how the middle is higher than the sides? That's how the whole patio should be installed. The only tricky part to this is accounting for that crown when setting your retaining wall block, to allow the extra inch or two for the crown.

[Stonehenge]

Oh yeah - you wanted a link for the In-Lites. It's weird, they appear to not want to be known - after an exhaustive search, I found a supplier in Michigan: http://www.consumersconcrete.com/inlite.html

They are friendly folks there - they can send you the bits and the lights. If I recall, the lights are $7 apiece, and you know the bit prices.

You might think "Rex, you're charging $60 per light?" Wait until you have to install them. $60 is fair. Not to mention, in many areas you just can't find this kind of thing - so there's a novelty tax you can apply... ;)

[Rex Mann]

Last year I used over 200 of those little lights. Easy upsell. My old vendor did all the drilling and sold me the "guts". They charged me $ 11.00 per light and $ 11.00 per paver to drill. Pricey, but it's was not worth the mess or time for us to do it. I am now a distributor for them. We pay around $ 3.15 per light. We have a local concrete cutting and coring company drill them out for $ 3.00 a piece:$$: Only drawback is they only drill the large hole. Not thrilled with the stability when it's done that way. I plan on getting my own drill and bit setup.

Peace,

Rex

[scl]

My local supplier is getting $70 for a drilled wall block complete with light, $30 for a paver with a light, and $11 for just the light. Drilling sure seems expensive to me. Like I said at these prices y the time I add any markup and labor, they price themselves right out of the install. Too bad, they're pretty cool.

[BRL]

Yea I didn't think $60.00 per light sounded out of line. I did a search on Google and found this: http://www.in-lite.com/english/index.html , as well as the company Stonehenge posted.

Thanks for all of the help everyone. I drew a quick picture to show what we're looking at. They were considering steps on the grass side but probably won't do that & will just have the patio meet the existing grass there. I understand the crowning, but I think I can go with my original thought? They like the look of the stepping up the wall courses on the short side wall. So it will be easy to have the wall higher than the paver edges on that side. One full course at the corner, then another course closer to the house. So at 13 feet for that portion of patio, I'd need 3.25" of slope to meet the front wall, based on the paver manufacturer's specs of 1\4" per foot. Then I can just grade the grass side correctly. So level at the house & level at the front face of the wall. Knowing those details now, do you still recommend the crown, or go for the straight slope? Thanks.

[Rex Mann]

BRL,

Why not go one more course and then they could use that section as a sitting wall. It gives them more value.

Peace,

Rex

[Stonehenge]

Seeing it sketched out, I think it'd work fine. :) The only other thing I'd make sure to do then is get the backs of your V-Lok split, so you can install a pseudo-vertical wall on that side, with no gaps in front or back, textured face on both sides.

And if you can't order them double-split, you can always make them double-split.

Oh yeah, and I'm thinking like Rex on this - add one more course and now you have added function. :D

Hey, that website must be new!! I looked all over creation on Google a couple years ago and found almost bupkus, other than that Consumer's Concrete site.

[BRL]

Thanks again! We did consider the extra course along the front. Customer felt it might be a tripping hazard, as they are used to the existing set up being flush (though it has sunken enough that the current wood wall is a tripping hazard LOL). But at least the one side will have that sitting wall. Plus we are a little over their budget right now with everything planned, so leaving that extra course out of there is helping in that regard as well (and influencing their decision I would assume)

LOL The light bulb suddenly went off late last night about making sure the inside of the wall is split faced where it will be exposed.

Now the question I had when we were considering the extra course, that I'll ask for future reference- How do we go about getting the water out of there? The 2 options I thought of was drilling some holes through to the face of the wall (but wouldn't want to mess up a nice wall with that), or installing some channel drains & grates where the patio slopes meet the walls. Is there anything better than that that I can't think of?

[Stonehenge]

If the pavers are pitched away from the house, toward the outside wall, and the pavers are flush with the retaining wall, there should be no need for a drain. Use some polymeric or organic joint sand to harden up the joints and reduce water absorption, and it'll all flwo right off the end.

Now for the retaining wall itself, there should be a drain behind the wall, at an elevation just above the grade in front of the wall. Run corrugated perf pipe, 3/4" clear around and over that (some use a 'sock' over the perf pipe, some not), and have a 'T' to daylight the pipe out the face of the wall.

It'll look like this:

[Stonehenge]

Or check this link to our site: http://www.stonehengebpl.com/drainage.htm

[dan deutekom]

These are cool lights but I have never been able to sell them for use in pavers. Have used them in deck work and fence work, but it does take more time then you would expect to install them.

[BRL]

Stonehenge,
Those parts I know. What I was asking is if we had decided to go with Rex's idea of the extra course for a "sitting wall", that you & I both thought were a good idea, how do we then drain the water out of the swimming pool I would have just built ;)

Though the recommendation of removing all of the existing soil behind the wall & replacing with good stuff put the project out of their original budget, the client is leaning toward going for the project. So that was good news today. The other option was to get the wall in & prep for the pavers, then do those when the budget allowed. However he would rather get it all done at once. Should know by early next week.

[Stonehenge]

Oh - I don't think Rex and I were thinking of enclosing the whole thing - just that side with the stagger to it. At least that's what I was thinking... :)

If you did wrap a sitting wall around the whole thing, drilling some holes at the seams of block at paver level would help. Installing a drain would be better.

But I was just thinking about slapping on another $20 in block on one side to give them some added value, and make use of those block extending above grade.

[BRL]

Oh, now I see what you're saying. I thought he meant put the course higher in the front too. The side will have 2 courses half way, so part of it will work for that.

[Stonehenge]

18" or thereabouts is the approximate height of a good seat or chair. 3 stacked Versa-Lok will fill that order nicely. :)

[Stonehenge]

I took this pic today at the supplier who's display we're building so you can see the crown. Very subtle, yet needed and very perfectly functional.

[Rex Mann]

Tumbled versa-lok? HEAVY!

Peace,

Rex

[Stonehenge]

Nope - this was our first experience with Rockwood's new wall units - no more metal clips and multiple pieces. I like the block - can make tighter turns, and these look tumbled, but it's just the face that has received the 'treatment'. 'Rustic' is the name for these units.

BTW - wall units are level here, pavers are providing the crown.

[BRL]

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!