Paver Patios in Redmond, WA

Generally the paver format, colour and finish, the dimensions, and where the surface sits relative to the frontage and the neighbours. Redmond Ridge and several of the newer developments operate genuine architectural standards, and a front terrace or a driveway apron is exactly what they exist to review — a rear garden patio not visible from the street is often outside the remit, but it is worth confirming. The process is rarely difficult and never instant, so a spring build wants submitting over the winter. We produce samples and a dimensioned layout suitable for submission.

It needs the drainage question answered before the base is designed. Valley-floor ground here is alluvial and sits close to a high water table, which means the base build-up has less depth beneath it before reaching saturated soil, and a surface laid over ground that stays wet is a surface that will move. The approach is a free-draining base with a genuine route for water to leave, established before excavation rather than after. On the upland none of this applies and the standard build-up is entirely appropriate.

In practice, somewhere around four hundred square feet — beyond that a single undifferentiated surface starts to read as hard standing rather than as an outdoor room. The fix is not to build less but to build it as two or three related areas: a dining terrace sized properly for the table and circulation behind the chairs, a smaller seating or fire area, and planting between them so the eye has something to stop on. It costs the same per square foot, and it is the difference between a patio people cross and one they sit on.

Usually worse than it looks, and it is worth knowing before you plan a surface. Developer grading leaves the ground compacted by months of heavy plant, typically under a thin skim of imported topsoil, which is excellent for a subgrade and terrible for anything living. For a patio that compaction is not a problem in itself — you are excavating through it anyway — but it does mean water reaching the underside of your base has nowhere to go, so the drainage design matters more on a new build than on an established garden with settled soil structure.