Paver walkways, stone steps and gravel paths

A paver walkway carries less weight than a driveway and more traffic than a patio, and it gets built like both. We strip topsoil and old fill to firm subgrade, then build back with 3/4" clean crushed base, 8" to 16" deep depending on the soil and the application, compacted in lifts. Geotextile goes down first on soft or wet subgrade. On top of that goes about an inch of screeded bedding, no more, and the pavers get laid off a string line with the cuts made on a wet saw. It is a paver patio in a narrower shape.

A soldier course along both edges gives the walk a defined line and puts the cut pieces where they are not the first thing you see. A contrasting color reads as a border, the same paver reads as one surface. On width, the number that matters is whether two people can walk side by side without one of them stepping into the lawn, and whether a wheelbarrow or a stroller fits. A front walkway gets built to that. Side yards get what the lot allows, which in older Bozeman neighborhoods is a narrow run between the house and the fence.

Where the grade changes, we set sandstone slab steps between boulders. Each slab is bedded and shimmed on compacted rock so it does not rock underfoot the first spring, and the boulders get buried about a third of the way in with the weathered face turned out. On a long slope we frame treads in timber and fill them with fitted flagstone. Where the path needs the hillside held back rather than stepped through, that is a retaining wall, and the proposal says so before anyone starts digging.

Not every path should be paved. Decomposed granite and crushed gravel go down over a compacted base and pack into a firm surface that drains, and they cost less per foot than pavers. They suit long runs, county lots outside Bozeman, and anything that curves a lot. They need an edge or they migrate: boulders set along the sides, or a poured concrete curb. No steel edging here either. Gravel gives up material every year to shovels, dogs and runoff, so a gravel path gets topped up rather than finished forever.

Pavers shovel clean because the surface is continuous and flat. Flagstone and other irregular stone catch a steel blade on the joints, so a plastic blade works better there. Gravel and decomposed granite do not shovel at all without taking some of the path along, so most of those get packed down for the winter and raked back in spring. Worth deciding before the walk goes in, because the run from the driveway to the front door is the one being cleared at six in the morning in January.

Before the base goes down, we can leave conduit sleeves under the walk. A sleeve is a length of empty pipe running across the path at base depth, capped at both ends and marked on the plan. If a lighting line or a drip line has to cross later, it gets pulled through the sleeve instead of somebody cutting the walk open and patching it. We do not do the electrical work. We leave the sleeve so whoever does has somewhere to go. Tell us at the site visit where lights or beds might end up.