Floating Pavers
Posted on July 23rd, 2008 – 1:54 PMBy Jason Hammond
The 24″ x 24″ pavers appear to float away from the main structure, helping to maintain the our designs overall theme of sliding planes, that mimics the lots natural landscape.
The odd pie shape of our lot and the relatively strange shape that it provided for a our yard, meant that we needed some way to connect the house to these outlying spaces. In my initial drawings/sketches that we provide to our landscape architect Dustin Halverson I sketched out the idea of a series of concrete pavers that appeared to float away from the main structure of the building and towards the larger side yard. This would ultimately be an access path to a potential firepit/BBQ as well as the badminton/lawn bowling and playground areas. Dustin agreed that this would be a good solution to the challenge and with a few minor adjustments we made this apart of our plan.
After waiting roughly a month for our sod to set it’s roots, Dustin and the landscaping crew returned to start the next phase of the process. The pavers were laid out in the desired pattern and then flags were placed to mark the corners of each stone, so the sod could be cut away, allowing them to set the pavers flush to grade. The tricky part is setting the pavers square as well as not breaking the 24″ x 24″ pavers, which are surprisingly fragile. Tomorrow the crew returns to set the pavers into final position.
8 Responses to "Floating Pavers"
My folks did something very similar to this when they built their home in the early 60’s. They used left over cement and poured “stepping stones” leading out the side door and throughout the rock garden that surrounded about 1/4th of the house’s foundation. Mom had each of us three pick our own stepping stone and ‘personalize’ it by making a hand imprint in the wet cement. Forty-plus years later they’re still there and with just the littlist of scrunching, my hand still fits the imprint except for my fingernails - its almost as if the jesture of making the imprint bound my hands and kept them from further growth after I was 6!
An interesting side note - of the all the stepping stones that were poured, the three with tiny hand prints are the only ones that didn’t crack during the 40+ years of frost upheavals.
Hi Patty,
Thanks for sharing the story. We didn’t pour these pavers so we can’t put the boys hand prints in them but I like that idea. I can see the impact it had on you and can see how my 2 boys would like it.
Jason
These look great! Would you mind divulging the source for your concrete pavers? We would love to use them in our yard! Thanks for sharing your homebuilding journey online it has been fun to follow.
Stephanie,
The pavers came from a company called interlocking Concrete Products. You can find distributors via their website.
http://www.interlock-concrete.com
Jason
I love it and was thinking of doing the same thing for a patio. What I have a question about is: did you place them right on the dirt or lay down sand first?
Everything is looking great!
Jason, Thanks for the link I’ll call them today!
Hi Darcy,
I believe that either way is a suitable option for this type of patio. However, in this case (given the large paver size 24″x24″) we opted to put a layer of sand underneath each one to help get each paver level. If you were going to do a patio where the pavers butted up against one another, you would certainly want to put a good sand base under them so you could level the stones in relationship to one another.
Jason
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