Patio and Drainage





We started this project because we  had a little water coming in our basement when we would get heavy rains as well as ice build up along side of the garage in the winter.  We looked at the grade of our yard and it was obvious we had some issues to take care of.  So we went at it 'sweat equity/labor' style.  Not fun, but we are happy with the outcome. 

I had to start by busting out the old concrete between the garage and house.  I wish I had a better picture of what it used to look like, but o well.  I digress, I had to break out the concrete and scoop up all the river rock (by hand....eessh, if you've ever shoveled river rock you know what I'm talking about) to get a solid base for my soon to come patio.  While I had everything tore up we decided to make the fence look a little more aesthetically pleasing by straighting it out.  It used to be at an angle and looked awkward. 

Ice and water would build up in front of the door and made things very slippery/dangerous.

Next I started to put my 4 inch PVC pipe underground (I chose 4 inch to maximize water flow and to reduce the chance of clogging.  This was a little more difficult than I had hoped because I had only a few inches of fall to work with.  At the back of the house, there are two gutter down spouts and my sump pump drain.  I plumbed all these together.  As you can see in the picture, I have to make sure everything slopes towards the driveway where the drain is located.  Along the way I hooked up one more downspout.  I used solid PVC so no tree roots could penetrate the pipe to look for water.  All of this was going to be covered with concrete to make our patio so I could not make any mistakes in my calculations (if you know me and my projects... this was hard). 

Then comes the easy part.  Setting up concrete forms and a little reinforcing steel to strengthen the concrete (sorry I do not have any pictures of this).  I had some of my co-workers come and help me pour the concrete.  All this went fairly well until a jogger ran through a small part of the sidewalk I was replacing (I decided that while we were replacing the patio we should replace some broke sidewalk). It was not that big of a deal because the runner came and told me right away.  All was fixed. 

Before the forms were in place.



Here is the finished patio.  You can see the drain toward the bottom of the patio if you look closely.  We love not having to deal with the downspouts on this side of the house since completing this project.