Can a concrete patio go on a back yard that slopes?

Can a concrete patio go on a back yard that slopes?

Yes. A patio on ground that is not flat gets cut into the slope, built up on fill, or stepped down in two levels, and a crew pouring concrete patios in Henderson picks among those from where the ground sits against the back door and how far it drops across the footprint of the patio.

Which way the yard runs matters as much as how much. Ground that climbs away from the house leaves the patio sitting in a cut with yard above it. Ground that falls away leaves it standing on something built under the low side. Those are different jobs with different problems.

The East End lots are mostly flat and give a crew nothing to work around. The yards around the Audubon-area hills are the other kind, and so is any lot that rolls off toward a back fence or a tree line. Past a certain drop under a high door, a deck is the better answer, and the last section says where that line tends to fall.

How do you read how much a yard drops under a patio?

Drive a stake at each corner of where the patio would go. Tie a string to the stake nearest the house at about the height the patio would finish, pull it to the far stake, and level it with a line level. The gap between the string and the ground at the far end is the drop.

Do it the other way too, side to side. Plenty of yards fall toward one side fence as well as away from the house, and the low corner is the one that decides the job.

What the gap means:

• A few inches disappears into the gravel base the patio gets anyway, laid a little thicker on the low side.
• More than that, and the low side needs fill held by an edge, or the patio wants a step partway across.
• A gap that reaches your knee, at a door already well above the grass, points toward the last section of this page.

The crew repeats this on the site visit with a level, measured off the door sill instead of a guess at the finish height. Your string is for knowing which kind of yard you have before anyone comes out. The published ranges for what a backyard patio costs in Henderson already list a step or landing as something that moves the number. Cutting, fill and a formed edge get priced off the yard itself at the visit.

What changes when the yard rises away from the house?

The patio gets cut into the slope so it sits at the back door, and the yard above it now sheds its rain straight toward the slab. That water needs a path of its own, a shallow swale or a drain along the uphill edge that carries it around the patio and off to the side, never across the concrete toward the house.

You can usually see this coming before anyone digs. After a hard storm there is a fan of mud or washed mulch at the foot of the slope, right where the patio would go. Put a slab there without a way around it and that same fan lands on the concrete every time it rains.

The swale is the simpler version, a gentle dip in the grass along the high edge of the patio, graded to fall toward a side yard that already drains. Where there is no room for one, a drain goes in along the edge instead, a channel or a pipe in gravel that carries the water to the same place.

Cutting in also leaves a bank where the dig stops. A low one gets laid back gently and seeded. A taller one needs something holding it, and that is the same question as the wall in the next section, only on the high side.

The slab itself still falls away from the house, the same as on a flat lot. The patio page covers which way a patio should fall.

How is a patio held up where the yard falls away?

Compacted fill under the low side, and an edge that keeps that fill from walking out. Where the fill is shallow, the slab’s own edge is formed deeper and thickened so the concrete is its own curb. Where it is deeper, a wall goes in first and the patio gets poured on the ground that wall holds.

The fill is where these jobs go right or wrong. It goes in as clean crushed stone, spread in thin layers and compacted after each one, so the lowest layer is as firm as the top one. Yard dirt and the clay that comes out of the dig do not belong in it. Fill pushed in loose keeps settling for years, and loose fill is one of the usual answers to why a slab sinks after it was poured.

Under all of it is Henderson clay. The topsoil and anything soft get stripped off before the first layer goes down, so the stone bears on firm ground and not on a layer of roots and loam that will rot out.

A wall is a separate matter. A wall that holds back real ground, block or poured, is its own job with its own design behind it. A good patio crew says plainly when a yard has crossed into that territory.

Is a patio with two levels better than one flat slab?

On a yard with more drop than a base can take up, usually yes. Two pads with a poured step between them follow the ground instead of fighting it. Each pad sits on a little fill instead of a lot, and the far edge never stands tall above the grass. The grill and the table get a flat spot each, too.

Picture the one-slab version on a yard that falls away. All of the fill piles up at the far side, where the ground is lowest and softest, and the patio ends in a tall edge that someone steps off in the dark. Splitting it into two levels moves half of that drop to the middle, where a step is expected.

The step gets poured in place with both pads, the same day and the same truck, so it is part of the patio and not a block set against it later. Where it goes is a layout call made standing in the yard. Often it lands at a natural break in the ground. Sometimes it lands where the use changes, an upper pad by the door for the grill and a lower one out in the yard for the table.

One flat slab still wins on a yard that only drops at the far edge, or when the plan is a big table that wants one floor under all its chairs.

What happens at the back door when the patio sits lower than it?

A landing goes in at door height and steps come down from it to the patio, all poured with the patio instead of added afterward. On a yard that falls away, the door can sit well above where the patio ends up, and the landing stops being a stoop and grows into a slab of its own, with the patio a level below it.

That upper slab is worth sizing for use. A landing with room to stand with the door open and set a bag of groceries down is a different thing from a step outside a door. Some yards end up with the grill on the landing, near the kitchen, and the table down on the patio.

How many steps come down, and how the landing is shaped, comes from the door height the crew measures at the visit.

When is a deck the better answer on a sloped yard?

When the back door sits high above a yard that keeps falling past the house, a deck usually makes more sense. Bringing a patio up to that door takes deep fill and a wall to hold it, and posts on footings do the same job with less ground to move. A walk-out level that wants a dry, covered space under the upper floor is another case for a deck.

Where a patio still wins on the same lot is lower down. A short landing at the door, steps to the yard, and a stepped patio poured further out where the ground flattens can cover the same table and grill without lifting anything up to the door. Many sloped yards end up with both, a small deck off the door and a patio below it where the ground levels out.

The patio page weighs whether a patio or a deck makes more sense on cost.