Laying patio between walls that are not parallel

twopointfour1980

Hi everyone

Our rear patio is in dire need of replacement. I am keen to try the project myself and have lots of questions about how to prepare the ground properly before starting but this relates to thinking about how to lay the slabs.
The image below shows the shape of the patio area. As you can see the retaining wall that then leads to the garden is on a different line to the house. The current patio uses a mixture of square slab sizes layed in an ordered crazy paving style. The slabs have been laid with the straight edge to the house and then cut at an angle at the retaining wall but I've always been bothered by the seeing the cut angle when sitting on the patio. This is probably because i spend more time looking out from the patio than in!

I'm sure it comes down to personal choice but is there a perceived best way round to handle this kind of patio? I would like to replace with square slabs all of the same size (prob about 30cm by 30m) to make the patio feel more ordered and clean. The width at the narrowest part is about 60cm where the extension comes out and at the widest around 3m.

Thanks

 

CSI_Yorkshire

twopointfour1980 said:

 The slabs have been laid with the straight edge to the house.

That's the normal way as far as I know.

km1500

you could build a low retaining wall to the left of the steps thus squaring off the patio

you could fill the gap with soil and plant plants eg small shrubs

That will give you a square patio to pave

JGB1955

Parallel with the house wall seems 'right' to me.  I would fill the triangular gap between patio and garden wall with stones/slate chippings.

twopointfour1980

Thanks for your comments. I guess one extra feature to think about is drainage. The retaining wall currently has some small holes that feed through to the other side to allow water to drain but the patio has dropped over time to the point where they are ineffective so water currently pools at certain points at the retaining wall. 

If the angle was filled with stone/chippings, then I'm thinking would help with drainage and look less messy than drainage holes?

twopointfour1980

km1500 said:

you could build a low retaining wall to the left of the steps thus squaring off the patio

you could fill the gap with soil and plant plants eg small shrubs

That will give you a square patio to pave

Food for thought for sure - thank you

Simonon77

The normal way would be to start at the house wall and work outwards from there with them parallel but there is no law saying you have to do this. If you prefer having them straight along the garden wall, then do this instead and have the cut along the house wall.

I have seen ones laid at a 45 degree angle, and it actually looked pretty good

Sometimes this can actually look better if you don't sit in the garden looking towards the house as it is more hidden. Also when you get new patio fitted, you can raise the height to meet the old drainage holes.

JohnJ76

Personally i would go square to the house.  The alignment of the garden is easier to change in future than moving your house, unless you plan an extension.

If you have questions on paving I doubt you will find a better resource anywhere than this guy www.pavingexpert.com  if he hasn't got the answer or a 'how to', then I doubt it can be built. I followed his instructions and saved myself £3k on my patio. nearly killed me but it looked absolutley fantastic.  

casper_gutman

I'd lay slabs square to the house. You could consider laying a main rectangular area of patio amd them fill in the rest with a triangular planted area.

Alternatively, perhaps consider a border of contrasting paving around a main rectangular part, in a contrasting style of paving. Part of the border could be tapered to fill in the triangle, and if you use a style of paving there which doesn't have such obvious right angles - e.g., river cobbles or something - then maybe that could look okay?