Building a brick walkway or patio is a fairly easy and fun project that can add functionality and a good look to your garden or yard. In any big city you should be able to pick up used bricks from Craigslist or FreeCycle for free. Just remember that bricks are HEAVY. If you’re crazy and use a regular car to pick them up (like we did), don’t plan on filling your trunk more than 1/3 the way full and watch that your car doesn’t sag too much. Free bricks aren’t worth new shocks.
We collected several tons of free of bricks last year to build a patio. When the kids started walking across what will be the strawberry beds I decided to use the leftover bricks to make a couple of paths. The mailman also crosses the strawberry beds, so the first path I made is right where he would be crossing them.
Ground Prep
To lay a patio or walkway correctly, you will need to lay a good base.
Start by digging down about 4 to 6 inches below where the bottom of the bricks will be. If you are building next to a house, you will want to slope your dug out area away from the house to draw water away from your basement. You will want a slope of about 1 inch per foot.
Fill the dug out area with crushed gravel so that just 1 inch of extra space remains (brick depth, plus 1 inch). Rake this level. The gravel will provide a good base for your patio or walkway, and will help avoid ice heaves during our friendly Minnesota winters.
Add just a little more than an inch of sand above the crushed rock and rake it smooth. You want enough sand so that your bricks will stand slightly above the level you want them to end up at. We will have some settling in the next few steps and a more over time.
The above method is what I did on our back patio and it turned out well. For the short garden paths I was building this time, I decided they were short enough to cheat a little. The dirt where the paths were going had nice firm black dirt, so I simply leveled and packed the black dirt instead of using gravel and sand. These paths are short enough that if they do shift around, I can fix them quickly and without too much effort.
Placing Bricks
I used three different patterns for my paths.
The herringbone pattern has each brick end against a brick face, crating an arrow effect. I thought it worked well across a corner.
Further back in the picture above you can see the running pattern. Each brick is placed parallel to the others, but offset half way. So the middle of each brick lines up with the crack between two bricks in the previous row.
The corner to corner path is for the mailman, our mailbox is built into the garage wall, and he needs to get across this dirt somehow. It will also be handy for us when we’re leaving the garage and going into the yard. The running pattern path approximates the path we take when leaving our house, crossing the yard and going to a car in the driveway.
In fact, it points right to this path. I’m not sure what this pattern would be called, inline or parallel perhaps?
Place the bricks on the leveled sand or dirt so that they are about 1/4th inch higher than where you want it end up. When you pack in the bricks in the next step they will settle a little bit.
Packing in the Bricks
A good sweep broom is essential to pack in the bricks.
Start with dry packing. Stomp the bricks and the dirt around the bricks to firm them into place. Sweep loose dirt or sand over the bricks to fill the cracks. Alternate between stomping and sweeping till you can’t sweep any more in between the cracks.
If you have access to a patio vibrator you can skip the stomping, but if you have a patio vibrator you probably don’t need these instructions.
Now it’s time for wet packing (especially in the black dirt scenario). Put a pile of dirt or sand on top of your bricks. Wet it so it forms a very thin and runny mud. Use the broom to push it back and forth over the cracks. It should run into the cracks and draw the dirt you dry packed further down. When it is gone, stomp some more, add another pile of dirt or sand and repeat.
You will know you’re done when you’re too tire to keep going or better yet, when you can’t get any more mud into the cracks. Leave the bricks dirty till they dry thoroughly.
Hey, Nice Brick Path!
Once it has dried completely, go ahead and wash or hose it down. If you did it right, the bricks shouldn’t move when you walk on it. If they do, go back to stomping and packing. You need more dirt in there to keep the bricks in place.
Enjoy!
Never forget seeing my little car sitting on its wheels with too many bags of excellent priced manure in the trunk. Loved reading about the midnight planting of strawberries – really taking that old fashioned ‘wait until the full moon’ to plant. So sorry to hear about the crop failure – we’ve all got a story – in my case several – the first disaster is always the worst. Fortunately there’s probably still a good selection of plants at the nursery to replace them! Enjoyed your blog.