Follow along as Adrian walks through the entire process of a typical job.
Hi, I’m Adrian Simunovic from Paradise Decks and Landscape Design. Today I’m visiting with some potential customers for the first time on site. They’re interested in doing a large landscape in their back yard. The only direction I’ve been given at this point is that they want to create a large entertaining area, and they want to achieve some privacy from their neighbours. Let’s goes have a look.
Part 1: The Plan
This yard was actually landscaped a number of years ago. There were two critical errors with that original landscape plan. Because of the elevation of the door we needed to create a deck, however the deck was all on one level so that it was somewhat disconnected from the yard below. In our plan, you’ll see how we soften the height of the door by breaking the levels, and creating more of a connection with the yard.
This landscape project is going to involve two main components: a large deck with a covered pavilion, and then beautiful stone stairs leading down to the lower yard. If you want to make an omlette you need to break some eggs, and with a landscape it’s basically the same thing: we need to tear out a lot of the existing vegetation and overgrowth in order to make room for the new plan we’ve designed for this yard.
The yard almost has a staged effect. There is an intermediate area that is still low from this door, and then an even lower yard. What we want to do is we want to create a connection with the yard by softening this height. We’re going to show you how we do that with a beautiful deck and stone stairs that lead from the deck to the lower yard.
In the original landscape plan, cedars had been planted along the fence line to try to create privacy. The problem with cedars is that they require some light in order to really grow fully, and you will notice that those cedars were quite thin and really struggling under the canopy of these mature trees. We’ve opted to simply take them out, and to replace them with yews, which do much better in shaded areas.
Part 2: Stairs and Bed Prep
So we’re at a stage now where we’ve ripped out most of the existing landscaping, and we’re down to bed preparation, but more importantly, we’ve now started to form up the stairs that are going to lead from the deck that doesn’t exist yet but will be here soon, transitioning as I said, comfortably down to the lower yard. It’s all about making the yard accessible. These stairs are going to be clad with a Wireton flagstone. You can already see some of the veneers going on to the edges of the concrete pads.
You can see all of these markings in the ground. These are painted marks showing the locations of the engineered helical piers, and we’re going to see those going in tomorrow. We use exclusively engineered piers. They’re far superior to concrete footings, and they carry much greater load, they can be driven to whatever depth is necessary in order to carry the load of the deck.
So this is Sean, our stone mason extraordinaire. You’ll notice that he’s actually pointing and troweling the mortar joints in between the veneers that are cladding the sides of the pads. You’ll notice that there’s a big elevation change. This is going to be a bed here, and we’re going to have to create a retention, so a wall is going to be built here to retain the soil that’s going to be filled behind the wall. We’ll show you how that’s being formed later on in the video.
Part 3: Engineered Piers
So today we’re setting the footings for a fairly large deck that’s going to be going in this area, and what we use are engineered helical piers, and to talk about that particular type of footing, I’ve got Brett from Techno Metal Post. (Brett) “Well I think a key part that you mentioned is that it’s a foundation system that relies on more that just the heavy concrete to support the load. It’s a system that relays on measuring the quality of the soil, which you can’t do with concrete. We know that varying capacity, but our machines are all designed to measure that quality, to measure the soil as it’s drilling down.”
Part4: Framing The Deck
So today we’re beginning the process of framing the deck. All of the engineered piers have been installed, and we’re now setting the height of each of the levels. As you can see, the framing is pretty much complete. They’re just putting the finishing touches on the upper level. Now that the deck is framed out, you can see from the footprint that each of the spaces on these levels is of a functional size. One of the common mistakes designers make when doing a multi-level deck is not making the levels large enough.
With any deck construction there’s a natural sequence. We can’t install any decking until we’ve run all of our services. For instance, we’re now running wiring which is going to be powering all of the lighting on the deck, and we’ll also have to be installing some gas piping for a fire feature which is going to be living underneath the pavilion, and for a gas barbecue in an outdoor kitchen.
Part 5: The Deck
One of the most striking features of this design is the pavilion, and beyond its obvious benefits of providing shelter from the sun and debris coming from the trees, it provides the opportunity for some really nice features. We’ve got rafter lighting shining up into the vaulted ceiling that creates an absolutely beautiful effect at night. From the centre we’ve got a fan that provides a nice cool breeze on a warm summer evening, and underneath the pavilion we’ve got a fire pit feature. Eventually there will be some nice lounging furniture surrounding the fire pit.
All of the plants in the beds have been selected for their tolerance to low or indirect light. The customers are absolutely delighted with the overall result, and so am I.
