PAVERS &
HARDSCAPE. — Paver Patios & Hardscape, Lakeville & South Metro MN — Lofton Landscaping, serving Lakeville, Savage, Prior Lake, Burnsville, Apple Valley, Rosemount, Farmington and Eagan.

A patio in a mild climate can get away with a thin base. In Minnesota it cannot. The ground here freezes deep and thaws repeatedly, and every one of those cycles moves whatever is sitting on it. Water trapped under pavers expands when it freezes, lifts them, and lets more water in on the next thaw — which is the mechanism behind every heaving, tilting, trip-hazard patio you've walked across in this state.

The defense is drainage, not thickness. A properly compacted aggregate base lets water move down and away instead of pooling under the pavers and freezing there. We build the base in lifts and compact each one, because dumping the full depth and running a plate over the top compacts the top three inches and leaves the rest to settle on its own schedule.

This is also why base depth isn't a place to save money. It's invisible on day one and it's the entire difference between a patio that lasts twenty-five years and one that needs relaying in five.

Every hard surface has to shed water, and it has to shed it away from the house. A patio pitched flat holds standing water; one pitched toward the foundation is actively pumping water at your basement. We run roughly an eighth of an inch of fall per foot — enough to drain, not enough that a table wobbles.

Edge restraint is the second failure point. Pavers laid tight with nothing holding the perimeter will spread outward under load, and once the edge units start migrating the whole field opens up and the joints fill with weeds. Every open edge gets a restraint spiked into the compacted base.

Third is the jointing sand. Standard sand washes out and takes the interlock with it. Polymeric sand binds when it's wetted in, resists washout and keeps most weeds from germinating in the joints — but it has to be installed properly, swept full and compacted, or it crusts on the surface and does nothing.

A retaining wall is a structure holding back a load of wet soil, and it fails from behind. Drainage aggregate and a drain line behind the wall are not optional extras — without them, water builds up behind the blocks, freezes, and pushes the wall over from the back. A leaning wall is almost never a block problem.

Height matters legally as well as structurally. Taller walls typically need engineering and a permit in south-metro cities, and we'll tell you when yours is in that territory rather than quietly building something that shouldn't be there. Often the better answer is two shorter terraced walls instead of one tall one — cheaper, safer, and it usually looks better.

This is most of our work in Savage and lakeside Prior Lake, where the ground slopes hard enough that holding it is the whole project.