Craft
How a Paver Patio Gets Built, Week by Week
A chronological account of what happens in your yard, so you know what you are looking at each day - and which days are the ones to ask questions on.
Most people watch a patio go in without much idea what stage they are at. That matters, because two of these days are the only chance you get to see the parts that decide everything. Here is the sequence.
Before anyone arrives
Utilities located and marked. Irrigation zones identified and heads flagged. Invisible fence traced, since it is shallow and easy to cut. Most of that belongs to you rather than to us, and the patio planner is the checklist for it. Access route agreed, and anything along it that you would rather not lose pointed out while it is still a conversation.
Day one to two: strip and dig
Anything built in gets dug at the same time. Footings for a kitchen run or a fire feature and the trench for their services go in now, because opening the same ground twice is the expensive way to do it.
Turf and topsoil off, then excavation to depth. This is loud, it is a lot of material moving, and the yard looks considerably worse than you expected. Both normal.
This is the first day to pay attention. The hole is open. Ask what depth was reached, whether it matched what was quoted, and what the ground turned out to be. If clay came out wetter than anticipated or fill turned up, now is when the plan should change - not later.
Day two to three: subgrade and separation
The bottom of the excavation gets compacted, and geotextile goes down over it if it is specified. Unglamorous, quick, and it will be buried within hours.
The second day to look. Once base stone covers it you will never see it again, and separation fabric is the item most quietly dropped from a job.
Day three to five: base in lifts
Base material in, compacted, more base, compacted again. Watch for it going in as layers rather than one deep fill with a single pass on top - that difference is the whole point, and it is visible from a window.
Day five: bedding and screed
A thin layer, screeded dead flat with rails and pulled out behind. Fast, and oddly satisfying to watch. If this layer is thick, ask why.
Day five to seven: laying
The part that looks like progress. Units go down in pattern, then get cut to the edges. Cutting is dusty and slow and often takes longer than the laying did.
Day seven: edges, compaction, joints
Edge restraint fixed, the whole surface compacted with a plate over a protective mat, and joint material swept in and vibrated home. The patio changes appearance at this point - the joints tighten everything visually and it starts looking finished.
Day seven to eight: reinstatement
Spoil away, access route made good, turf repaired or seeded. Set expectations here at the quote stage: some lawn damage along a machine route is realistic, and a contractor who promises none is either not using machinery or not being straight with you.
Weather, and why the schedule moves
Ground type moves it too. On the clay we work in around Brookfield, a wet week costs more days than the same week would on free-draining ground, because the subgrade has to be dry enough to compact.
Excavation and base work in an open hole do not go well in heavy rain, and on clay a wet dig is worse than a delayed one - saturated subgrade cannot be compacted properly. A crew that stops for weather is protecting your base. It is frustrating and it is correct.
The two questions worth asking
On dig day: what depth, and what did the ground turn out to be? Before the base covers it: is the separation in, and how many lifts is the base going in? Those two conversations, at those two moments, are worth more than any amount of specification read beforehand.