What, exactly, are you trying to accomplish? It sounds like you are after an alpine garden/path/drainage course, which isn't at all a comfortable mix of uses. If you have the stones, try laying out a few in the pattern you are planning, and *walk* on them. Ask other family members to do so also. Keeping to the stones isn't at all a natural gait, but takes paying attention and care with placing feet. Most people will probably end up walking on the non-stone parts of the path a great deal. And the desired fill material is not gravel. If you insist on calling it gravel, people will assume you are talking about gravel. The stones will move on a gravel base. Either sand or the material known to Agway here as Step 2. It has a lot of other names, crushed stone, stone dust, among others. It packs down to form a solid base. Woodchips do not break down into acidic soil. At least not according to the people who decompose things and them test them. Also moss isn't necessarily an acidophile. However, a soil mix of crushed stone and some of your native soil might work quite well. It just generally sounds like you need to do a lot more research into which plants you are interested in growing and what their needs are, and plan to make them a home where people won't be regularly walking on them. If all the property's drainage is going towards this object, both woodchips and stone chips are going to wash out. If you want a path, I'd plan on at least a hopscotch pattern (2,1,2), with the understanding that the plants are part of the path. If you want the area to be a planting bed, then decide which set of plants for specialized beds you are most interested in, research them, and prepare a bed for them. The current situation is total overkill for either of those plans. I'm not convinced I went deeper than 6" anywhere in my dry laid patio, and that was built with rock I dug up on the property, so they aren't dressed in any way.

Save the $5000 on the Eco-Smarte. It doesn't keep a pool sanitized. The 400 ppm calcium, the pH @ 6.8 and the copper in the water will all give you problems. You will see scale form when the pH rises, excessive copper caused staining and bio-slimes form in the pool. I know this from my own experiences caring for these systems. The CO2 system is an expensive option that has a limited usefulness and will use a lot of gas. The addition of salt will screw up the Eco-Smarte cell function too. It will not generate the hydrogen peroxide gas it's supposed to generate but would likely create chlorine that would attack the copper plates in the cell, adding to the copper level E-S wants in the water as an algaecide. Green hair, bathing suits and stains in the pool will occur. Eco-Glass is way over priced. It can help filter a finer particulate, but so does Zeo-Sand alternative for a lot less money. Regular sand will work just fine too. If you want the finest filtering, a Quad-DE 80 provides the easiest cleaning of any DE filter. DE filters the finest particulates. How big is the spa, number of jets and how far away is it that you need a 2 HP blower? Bump up the salt cell to the IC-60. You won't need the Rainbow 320 but if you want a back up system, it'll be there. A 10 waterfall is awesome. A 2.5 HP pump seems like an awful lot of water for it though. How many outputs are you planning? It will be very loud with that volume of flow. 44' of weeping rock, wow! That's a long run. The wireless is not waterproof, only water resistant. I encourage you to consider getting an iS-10 spa side controller added. This way, you can turn on and adjust everything while in the spa. The wireless unit can stay safe either in the house or at the patio table. Picture posting is easy. Create a Photobucket account. They are free. Upload your pictures to an album. There will be 4 options below each picture. Copy and paste the 3rd option on a line in the GW message box. The use of new lines between the pictures will give you space for descriptions. Hope this helps. Happy Easter and Congratulations! Scott

You want to set a bistro set or park bench in this spot that is only 4' deep? It seems to me that it's way too narrow for this purpose. Measure out a 4' space on your driveway with masking tape and then set a bistro set on it. Maybe the bistro set will fit but leave no room for you to actually walk up to a chair and sit on it. Seems to me that filling this spot (19 feet by 4 feet by 10" deep) with pea gravel will take a LOT of pea gravel. You could probably find some kind of calculator on line to find out how many cubic feet of pea gravel this spot requires, and then check to see how many cubic feet one bag contains. One more thought. We used to have walkways made of pea gravel. It was like walking on marbles. You want to put flagstone on top of marbles?

Notice how in real life people must "edge" their walks where they abut grass. I don't know how that's magically going to happen by growing grass between the stepping stones. It will be just as big a chore as cleaning stones. It wouldn't matter if there was weed barrier below the stones. Dirt would still settle on them, and then weeds would come, because the walk is the low area relative to the surroundings. So it's being washed with silt with every rain. This is why solid walks (concrete, brick, pavers, etc.) are popular. They are much easier to clean.