Border Paving Your Shed (or other structure)

Say you have a shed and want to lower the ground around it. Or you have some other structure where the slab or other foundation would become exposed. If you have spare pavers, you can use those to fit underneath like I'm going to show you. You could put it so the ends of the pavers are exposed on top, which is easier, but that looks too ugly for me and probably for you, too.

Out the back we have spare pavers behind the garden shed. We'll use the cream ones because they match the colour of the garden shed - we have 57 and only need about 43.

As you can see, we can do down the side of the garden shed but we should try and use up the materials behind the shed before attempting to place the pavers there. Unless you want to get huge guns moving stuff around a lot 💪

Figure 1 Under Shed By Bore

Figure 2 Under Shed Side

Figure 3 Behind Shed

1. Wet where we are going to put the pavers by jetting water into the soil. This is required for sandy soils and will not work for clay type soils (the clay would just need to be damp). A garden sprayer set to jet will work. The water will need to go under the slab or other foundation; it is important to do this when the soil level is at or above the bottom of the foundation or you'll undermine it. Fill with soil if you need to.

2. Dig the ground lower so it is at the same level as between the fence and the large shed. Use a water level as required (there is one behind the garden shed). You can use a similar process to brick paving but compaction and accuracy are not necessarily as important as for brick paving. Dig at the same time as placing the pavers (next steps) - you will need space to put the pavers in and also soil to allow for backfilling to half the depth of the pavers.

3. Carefully dig under the foundation but allow about 20-30 mm of soil left for compacting.

4. Mark the required depth on some wooden blocks cut to the same size as the pavers we're using.

5. Hammer in the wooden blocks under the foundation to compact the soil.

6. If necessary, whack off protruding bits of concrete with the hammer until the template fits. Just don't over-do it and use the sledgehammer, or things could get very ugly.

7. Fit the pavers in. If it doesn't fit, you may need to repeat 3 and 5. If you took out too much, put some moist soil back and re-compact. Check by looking down from the top if they are vertical. It is very tempting to hammer the pavers in directly. Only do this GENTLY and NEVER IN THE MIDDLE OF THE PAVER.

8. Backfill so the pavers are at least half buried.

Handy dandy wooden blocks cut to roughly the same shape as a brick paver. Just mark a line on one block (a real line scratched or painted on)