Paver Patios in Shoreline, WA

Access, almost entirely. The largest variable cost on a patio is not the pavers or even the base material — it is the labour of moving several tons of crushed rock, sand and units from the kerb to the work area. On a Seattle city lot where that goes through a three-foot gate by barrow, it can exceed the material cost outright. On a Shoreline lot with room to bring an excavator to the work and drop pallets beside it, the same job takes substantially fewer crew hours. Same specification, same materials, genuinely different labour.

For most of the city, yes — the same glacial till underlies both, so the base has to spread the load and provide the drainage path the subgrade cannot, which means six to eight inches of compacted crushed rock below the finished surface for a pedestrian patio, plus bedding and paver. The difference is scale rather than method: Shoreline patios are larger, so the falls have to be worked out across a bigger surface and the drainage sized for a bigger catchment. Flat ground on till drains worse than sloped ground, not better, and these lots are flat.

That the ground there behaves nothing like the plateau behind it. The Boeing Creek and Ballinger corridors cut real grade through this city, and ground near a ravine edge is more responsive to both loading and water than level ground is. Adding an impermeable surface changes where runoff concentrates, and discharging it toward the slope is the mechanism that causes problems over successive wet seasons. Critical area rules may also apply near a creek corridor. We check the parcel and design the discharge properly rather than letting the patio drain toward the drop.

More than the furniture footprint, and this is the calculation most people get wrong on their first patio. A six-seat table needs clearance behind every chair for someone to sit down, stand up and walk past — which in practice means roughly a metre beyond the table edge on each usable side. On a Shoreline lot there is usually room to do this properly rather than compromising, and it is worth using. A dining terrace that is six inches too small in every direction is the single most common regret we hear.