Landscaping services
A paver patio is four layers, and only the top one is decorative. Compacted subgrade, compacted aggregate base, an inch of bedding sand and the pavers themselves. Almost every patio that sinks, rocks or spreads within five winters failed in one of the bottom three, and those are exactly the layers a cheap quote leaves unspecified.
HyreYard is not a landscaping company. We plant nothing, grade nothing, build no wall, cut no tree and pull no permit. This page explains the work so you can read a proposal and judge the company that wrote it.
Paver failures are diagnostic. Each pattern points at a different layer, and the pattern tells you whether it is a repair or a rebuild.
Pavers, poured slabs, mortared stone and dry-laid flagstone are different trades, different failure modes and different permit questions, and they get quoted against each other as though they were the same job.
| Segmental pavers | Individual units on compacted aggregate and bedding sand. Flexible: it moves slightly with the ground and individual units can be lifted and reset. The base is everything. |
|---|---|
| Poured concrete slab | A rigid monolith with control joints. Cheaper per square foot, and when it cracks or settles it is a demolition job, not a repair. Reinforcement and joint spacing are its equivalent of a base spec. |
| Natural stone on a mortar bed | Stone set in mortar over a concrete slab. A masonry job, not a paving job, and it inherits the slab’s problems plus its own. |
| Dry-laid flagstone on sand or screenings | Informal, cheap, and genuinely appropriate for low-traffic garden paths. It is not a patio specification and should not be priced as one. |
| Permeable pavers | A different system with an open-graded base designed as a reservoir. It has its own ICPI specification, a different stone, and no bedding sand as you would recognise it. Do not let one be quoted and the other built. |
The quote that arrives twenty minutes after a phone call has been priced from a satellite image. These are the things that only a visit establishes.
Seven steps, and the first five are the ones you pay for. By the time the pavers go down, the quality of the patio has already been decided.
Marking the field and the fall, calling 811, then excavating to the depth of the base plus the bedding plus the paver. For a patio that is roughly 7.4 inches on well-drained soil, and more where the soil holds water or the climate freezes.
The excavated soil is compacted before any stone touches it. ICPI specifies 98% of standard Proctor density, ASTM D698 for pedestrian applications, and modified Proctor density, ASTM D1557 or AASHTO T180 for vehicular. A base built on loose subgrade settles no matter how well the base itself is compacted.
Dense-graded aggregate placed and compacted in layers of 4 to 6 inches, not in one deep dump. ICPI describes 7,000 lbf (31 kN) reversible plate compactors for the work. Each lift is compacted before the next goes on, which is why this step takes as long as it does.
ICPI: “Bedding sand should be spread and screeded to an uncompacted nominal 1 in. (25 mm) thickness.” The material is specified — ASTM C33 or CSA A23.1 FA1 concrete sand. And the exclusions are explicit: “Masonry sand for mortar should never be used for bedding, nor should limestone screenings or stone dust.”
Set on the screeded sand, not bedded into it, working off the pattern and string lines. Thickness matters to the application: ICPI distinguishes units around 2.375 inches for pedestrian use from around 3.125 inches for streets.
Fitted before the field is compacted and jointed. ICPI asks for “A minimum of 1 in. (25 mm) vertical restraining surface should be in contact with the side of the paver to adequately restrain it.” This is the step most often skipped on a cheap job and it is the one that decides whether the patio still has straight edges in five years.
The field is vibrated with a plate compactor over a protective mat, joint sand is swept in and the field is vibrated again until the joints are full. A patio that was never compacted after laying has loose joints from day one.
ICPI’s published minimums, for well-drained soils. They are floors, not targets, and cold or wet ground moves them up.
| Patio, walkway, pedestrian area | 4 inches of compacted aggregate base on well-drained soils. |
|---|---|
| Residential driveway | 6 inches. The load is the difference, and the difference is not marginal. |
| Residential street | 8 to 10 inches, with 6 inches where there is no freeze. |
| Cold or wet ground | Add ICPI’s stated allowance: “In colder climates, continually wet or weak soils will require that bases be at least 2 to 4 in. (50 to 100 mm) thicker.” |
| Why greater thicknesses appear | ICPI: “Greater thicknesses are often used in regions with numerous freeze-thaw cycles, expansive soils, or very cold climates.” |
The lines below are the section to print. A paving quote either contains these lines or it does not, and the difference between two bids that look identical is almost always here. Ask for every one of them in writing, before anything is signed.
Outdoors, the expensive failures are almost always failures of something buried — base depth, compaction, drainage, soil contact, footing depth. It is invisible the day the work is finished, which is why it has to be on paper before it starts. The general version is on the base specification.
Paving is priced on volume moved and area covered, and the two do not track each other. A small patio on a steep lot with no machine access can cost more than a large one on flat ground with a driveway to the site.
| Factor | Why it changes the number |
|---|---|
| Square footage | The obvious one, and the least variable per unit. It sets the paver and bedding quantity directly. |
| Base depth and soil | The difference between a 4-inch base on sand and a 8-inch base on wet clay is roughly double the aggregate, double the excavation and double the disposal. |
| Access | Whether a machine reaches the work. Wheelbarrowing aggregate through a side gate can be the largest single labour line on a small job. |
| Cut and fill | Moving earth to create the finished grade. Steep lots and raised patios both move this sharply. |
| Disposal | Spoil and old surface leave by truck and are tipped for a fee. Easy to overlook and rarely small. |
| Paver unit cost | The one line you can actually shop, and the one with the least leverage on whether the patio lasts. |
| Edges, curves and cuts | Every curve is saw work. A circular or radiused field generates far more cutting time and more waste than a rectangle of the same area. |
| Steps, walls and seating | Priced separately and properly so — a step is a structural element with its own footing question. |
| Compaction allowance on aggregate | Loose delivered stone compacts down. Our own planning allowance is +20%, and it is editorial — Compaction is a real volume change and ICPI requires the base to reach 98% of standard Proctor density. The ratio between the loose volume you buy and the compacted volume you end up with depends on gradation, moisture and the compactor, and there is no published national figure for "crushed stone". Twenty percent is our planning allowance, not a measurement of your quarry. |
HyreYard publishes no average price for this work and holds no dataset of landscaping invoices. Access, soil, grade, regional labour and material availability move the number far enough that a single figure would mislead more than it helped.
If the quote does not name a base depth, it has not quoted the patio. It has quoted the pavers. Two bids can differ by forty percent and both be honest — one is building 4 inches of compacted base on a compacted subgrade, and the other is laying pavers on two inches of screenings over whatever was there. You cannot tell them apart from a photograph, and you cannot tell them apart in year one either. Ask both to put the base depth, the compaction and the edge restraint in writing, and the two numbers will start to make sense.
Work out the paver and base quantities for your own dimensions
The full ten-point checklist is on choosing a landscaping company, and the lines a comparable bid contains are on reading a landscaping estimate.
ICPI is explicit: “If there is an uneven base, the bedding sand should not be used to compensate for it. Over time, unevenness in the bedding sand will reflect through to the surface.” The dip you levelled out with sand comes back through the surface.
Named exclusions, not a preference: “Masonry sand for mortar should never be used for bedding, nor should limestone screenings or stone dust.”
It is invisible, it is cheap relative to the field, and without it the pavers spread. Every joint that opens afterwards is a consequence of this one omission.
ICPI’s minimum is 1.5%. Below it, water sits on the surface and then goes into the joints, and a patio that drains toward a foundation is a drainage defect you paid to install.
Aggregate compacts from the top. A 4-inch dump compacted once is not a 4-inch compacted base, and the bottom of it will keep settling for years.
ICPI: “Frozen or saturated sand should not be installed, and frozen material should not be compacted.” A winter price is sometimes a winter price for a reason.
Fill settles on its own timetable. If a trench, a removed stump or a levelled slope sits under the field, it has to be compacted back in lifts like everything else.
ICPI Tech Spec 2 publishes 4 inches of compacted aggregate base for patios, walkways and pedestrian areas on well-drained soils, and 6 inches for a residential driveway. Those are minimums for good ground. ICPI adds that “In colder climates, continually wet or weak soils will require that bases be at least 2 to 4 in. (50 to 100 mm) thicker.” So on wet clay in a freeze-thaw climate, the honest answer is more than 4 inches, and the specific number is a judgement a contractor should be willing to explain from the soil in front of them.
Almost always one of three things, and the pattern tells you which. A dished area in the middle of the field is base compaction — either not compacted, or placed in one deep lift. A straight settlement line is an uncompacted trench or a removed root underneath. Edges spreading with joints opening is missing or failed edge restraint. None of these is a paver problem, and none of them is fixed by anything done to the surface.
Not as bedding, and ICPI names them specifically: “Masonry sand for mortar should never be used for bedding, nor should limestone screenings or stone dust.” The bedding material it specifies is ASTM C33 or CSA A23.1 FA1 concrete sand, screeded to an uncompacted nominal 1 inch. Screenings hold water and they are fine-graded enough to behave unpredictably under load.
Frequently not, and frequently yes for something adjacent to it. The model administrative permit-exemption list covers “Sidewalks and driveways not more than 30 inches (762 mm) above adjacent grade, and not over any basement or story below and are not part of an accessible route.” But the sentence that matters most in that same list is this one: “Exemptions from permit requirements of this code shall not be deemed to grant authorization for any work to be done in any manner in violation of the provisions of this code or any other laws or ordinances of this jurisdiction.” This is the sentence people skip and it is the whole point. Not needing a permit is not permission to build it wrong, and it is not permission at all under zoning, a deed restriction, a homeowners association covenant, or an easement. Those are separate instruments with separate consequences, and none of them is waived by a building-permit exemption. A patio can be permit-exempt and still be blocked by an impervious-coverage limit, an easement or a homeowners association covenant. One call to the building department settles the permit half, and it is free.
ICPI: “Slopes should be a minimum of 1.5%.” That is about three-sixteenths of an inch per foot, and over a twelve-foot patio it is about two and a quarter inches of fall — enough to see if you look for it, and not enough to notice when you are sitting on it. It runs away from the house.
They are different trades with different failure modes rather than one being better. Pavers are flexible, individual units can be lifted and reset, and a settled area can genuinely be repaired. Concrete is usually cheaper per square foot and has no joints to maintain, but a crack or a settlement is permanent and repairs are visible. Both depend entirely on what is under them, which is the part neither salesperson leads with.
Most likely efflorescence — soluble salts brought to the surface as moisture moves out of concrete products. It is cosmetic, it is common on new work, and it usually weathers off over a season or two. It is not a structural finding and it is not evidence that anything was built wrong.
It is a maintenance choice, not a structural one, and it does nothing whatever for the base. Sealers can deepen colour and make some stains easier to lift; they also need reapplying, they can trap moisture if applied to damp work, and a sealed surface can be slippery. We hold no test data on sealer performance and are not going to invent a recommendation. Spend the money on base depth first — that is the part you cannot redo.
Information on this page is general and varies by climate, soil, grade, construction and local code. It is not horticultural, arboricultural or engineering advice, and a local building department, water utility or homeowners association can impose requirements that take precedence over anything written here. HyreYard is an independent landscaping resource and connection platform, not a landscaping company, and does not perform, supervise, inspect or warrant any outdoor work.
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