What would you guys recommend for a paver bass? Right now I'm scheduled to have decomposed granite delivered but Google is telling me that might not be the best idea. Any advice? I'm in CS if it matters

I own a business that installs concrete papers. Here is what we follow on all our installs. www.icpi.org

Putting in paver driveway, then sidewalk, then patio right now. For the driveway part, I dug down 11-14" and then a few area deeper because of soft/mushy clay. Using decomposed granite. Put on about 1-2" of decomposed granite and tampered it, then another 1-2" of decomposed granite all the way up. Then an inch of sand and pavers.

Not the most fun I've had in the backyard.

smoke, question for you: I have a slab patio I want to do stone on. however I cant seem to find a good solution for restraining the last line of bricks on the slab. how do you normally do that? the slab is proud of the ground level, so building up a concrete footer wont work.

I did the same years ago and glued the last row of bricks on with liquid nails, I think. We sold the house within a year of so not sure about longevity, but it held up well while we were there.

We mortar the outside row of pavers to the concrete. The problem with using glue/adhesive is that you can have bedding sand loss. On overlays you still want to use 1/2" to 1" of bedding sand.

so you put a .5-1" bed of mortar on the outside layer of pavers, then a bed of sand in the main body where you put pavers? My concern is that the guy who did the slab had an issue and it looked like !@#$. So his solution was to skim a layer of mortar over the slab, which is now flaking up a little in an area. I worry that mortar bonded to that would let go eventually.

Correct. Mortar on the perimeter and bedding sand in the middle. Then you sand the joints between the pavers when you are done. This is what keeps them from moving. Now if you are concerned about the skim job the concrete guy did, rightfully so, you can use a retaining wall block outside of the concrete around the perimeter. You can set these on 6" of compacted roadbase and leave the retaining block 1/2"-1' above the concrete so when you install the bedding sand it levels out with the top of the retaining block. Then you install pavers and you can use adhesive to secure the pavers to the top of the retaining block.

agrams said:

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so you put a .5-1" bed of mortar on the outside layer of pavers, then a bed of sand in the main body where you put pavers? My concern is that the guy who did the slab had an issue and it looked like !@#$. So his solution was to skim a layer of mortar over the slab, which is now flaking up a little in an area. I worry that mortar bonded to that would let go eventually.

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Why don't you just chip off the skim coat where it is peeling, clean the concrete by scarifying it or acid etch it, then apply bonding primer and mortar them in. Usually, as SmokeDog said, pavers without a concrete border are mortared about 12-18" from the edge. You can also make a concrete curb to border the pavers. It would have to be 4-6" wide by the height of the pavers plus the sand bed.