Brick Pavers Installation : Step 2 Prep & Excavation

After doing some PLANNING of your brick paver project, it is time to PREP & EXCAVATE the area to install your brick paver patio. Mark out the location of your brick paver patio, walkway, or driveway by using marking paint or use the family garden hose to outline your paver project. It is always a good idea to contact MISS DIG in your area to have all utilities, phone, & cable marked before excavating for your paving stone patio.

The tools that will be required for PREPPING your interlocking brick pavers are simple at this step. You will need a wheel barrel, pointed shovel, rake, and some sweat equity. Always remove any sod (grass), mulch, stone, or existing concrete where you will be installing your patio stones. You can strip your sod or concrete out if your paver patio is not that big, but often it is best to rent a power sod cutter or air jack to help in removals. No sense physically burning yourself out in the early stages of this project. Once the area for your brick pavers is prepped, it is time to excavate the area for base material.


EXCAVATING for brick pavers is usually the hardest physical part of any paver project. Most homeowners do not have a skidsteer or tractor to dig out the area to be excavated for a patio, walkway, or paver driveway. This step will require some sweat equity and is important not to be skimped on. MAKE SURE YOU EXCAVATE DEEP ENOUGH TO ALLOW FOR THE PROPER BASE DEPTH to help insure long term performance of your brick pavers. In the earlier posted PLANNING step 1 I detailed how to set your heights. Now, from the top of your brick paver height, you want to excavate down @9" . I determine this measurement from 2.75" of paver thickness, 1" of bedding (screed) course, and average 5" of gravel base. For a brick paver patio or brick paver walkway, 4-5" of gravel base is sufficient if the soil drains well. For brick paver driveways, you will excavate down @13" from the top paver height. Basically you are doubling the gravel base thickness for normal driveway applications. If you experience clay soils, I would add 2-3" of gravel base thickness for patios & walks, and add 4-5" for driveways. It is important to excavate brick paver areas @4" wider along all outside edges so you have base to install the edge restraint on and also give yourself some flexibility in the final layout when installing the brick pavers.

Once these physically challenging steps of PREPPING & EXCAVATING for brick pavers is complete, you will begin to enjoy the "fruits of your labor" as the paver patio begins to evolve. Check back soon for Step 3 : Base Material for Brick Pavers.

Brick Pavers Installation : Step 1 PLANNING

For over 25 years I have been assisting homeowners and contractors with design & installation of brick pavers and modular retaining walls. Whether you are installing a brick paver patio, walkway, driveway, planter, or steps, a good guided plan is needed to insure a successful paver installation that is not only aesthetically pleasing but economical.

The PLANNING stage for a interlocking brick paver or modular retaining wall installation will be your easiest step in terms of labor, but probably the most important step. A poor plan of designing, ordering, or installing your brick paver project can lead to alot of frustration and unneccessay redo or repair.

For simplicity we will discuss a game plan for planning out the installation of a paver patio. We will also assume we do not need any steps to transition down. Start by taking measurements of the area that you want to install your brick paver patio and transfer the dimensions of the brick patio area onto some graph paper (boxes). I like to use 1 box = 1 sq.ft. (or linear foot) if the dimensions will fit on one sheet. If not, try making 1 box = 4 sq.ft ( or 2 linear feet). If your paver patio will have a curved design, use the garden hose to layout on the grass the shape & size that you are looking for. If you already have patio furniture, grill, or chiminea, place them in the patio area you mapped out to make sure you have enough room to move around comfortably. Take several reference measurements and transfer the points onto the graph paper.

Now, your first important piece of information needs to be calculated ... SQUARE FEET! This number is easily calculated by WIDTH X LENGTH = SQUARE FEET. When calculating FACE FEET for retaining walls, replace the WIDTH with HEIGHT in the equation above. By transfering your design to the graph paper, you can easily count the boxes to determine the square feet of your pavers patio, especially in a curved design. This square foot number of your brick paver installation will be the crucial information used for ordering your brick pavers, base materials, and other paver products.

The next important piece of information that you will need to know is the ...LEVEL of the EXISTING GRADE! This the level of the land in the area that you will be installing your brick paver patio. This information is very important for ordering your base materials and also important for how deep you need to dig down to install your paver base. We use a surveyors level to perform our brick paver installations but most homeowners do not need to rent one to obtain this information. Get a spool of string, a few small stakes, and line level bubble. Install a stake at the house and tie the string at the level you want your patio pavers at the house. Install another stake at the farthest point out of your patio. Pull the string from the stake at the house and wrap around the new stake while using the line level bubble on the string. Pull the string tight and wrap around the outside stake so the bubble shows level. Mark this spot on the outside stake with a marker and remove the string if you like. In the brick paver industry we will use a rule of thumb for slope of 1 inch per 10ft length. This is just a reference and you can use any slope as long as it is a "positive pitch" away from the home. The more slope you have the better but remember you do not want to create a brick paver patio that is a ramp or your furniture is leaning. 1 inch per 10ft lengths is not that noticeable to the naked eye and seems to work quite well in drainage. For our example paver patio, we will say the outside stake (patio edge) is 20ft out from the house stake. So, we will make a second mark (another color) on the outside stake 2 inches (1" per 10ft) down from the mark that was level. This will represent the height of our patio out in the yard. This is an important reference point so we can see how high our paver patio will be out in the yard. You will be able to determine whether you can just landscape up to the brick pavers or whether you will need a retaining wall to retain the patio.

The last piece of important information will come from re installing the string line from the house stake and wrapping the string around the outside stake where the outside paver patio height was marked with the slope. Now you can measure down @9-10" from this string line to reach the bottom of your digging for installing the proper paver base materials. This will answer one of the most frequently asked questions from homeowners, "How far do I dig down?".

We will go into more detail about prepping for your paver patio in Step 2 but this PLANNING stage will set the "ground work" for a better brick paver patio installation. This is the stage to mentally obsess about the details before you begin to stress your muscles with labor intensive steps, so enjoy!