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Landscape Design

Need help deciding how much to extend patio

6 years ago

last modified: 6 years ago

Interested to see the opinions of everyone on here. We are trying to come up with a concept of how much further out we should extend our patio on the walkout portion of our basement. We want enough room to do some nice seating around a fire pit and for it to meet the driveway on the side. Driveway is 30 ft wide starting at the house.

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Comments (4)

Kim in PL (SoCal zone 10/Sunset 24)
6 years ago
I am not a professional, but have built a dining room and a patio before. My preference is 15' minimum to allow for traffic around furniture, to allow for chairs to be pulled back from a table, and still be able to walk behind them. That said, this is for a fire pit with seating around and might need more room? And your connecting walk would ideally be 4' wide. Just my thoughts.
sheloveslayouts
6 years ago
We considered a fire pit, but in my research I learned it's recommended that the pit is at least 25 feet from structures. For fire safety. Something to consider.

Regarding size, within reason I don't think you can go too big. I'd want enough space that I could have an outdoor living room with clear, wide walk ways. So at least 12'x12' NOT including walkways around the seating area.

My husband and I argued a bit about patio size at our last house. He wanted approximately 30'x25' and I wanted smaller. I'm so glad my husband won that one because it was awesome if a little small feeling sometimes.

After we got a table/chairs and a toddler water table with room for chalk drawings and a couple toys there wasn't much room left. Depending on your family make up, patios can be workhorses for family activity; sometimesmore han a lawn.
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PRO
Yardvaark
6 years ago
It would take more information in order to know how things could work out. (I think you are talking about a patio extension and a connecting walk ... not expanding the patio to the drive ...?) It looks like there is some blank wall in that vicinity of the house, which is whispering "needs a small tree form," to me. You'd want to place a walk far enough from the building in order to allow space for decent planting. You'd want the patio to project outward far enough that a decent walkway configuration can integrate well into the overall design. What's out in the yard? Maybe the patio would want to project outward and interface with it in a shape that is not just a plain rectangle. The shape needs to correlate with a fire pit which usually has a circular format in how the seating is arranged. My gut says you will be expanding the present patio about 60 to 80% in order to accomplish these things in a workable and attractive way, and that it is probably not a simple rectangle.
NHBabs z4b-5a NH
6 years ago
I agree with the comment about distance that the fire pit needs to be from structures.

From how I read your comments and drawing, you basically want to pave much of the rest of the back yard? Or is there some yard beyond this? If you will be adding paving for most of your yard, consider permeable paving or some other method of keeping some or all of your rain fall on the property such as a lower level bed of moisture tolerant plants. That would be a large percent of impermeable surface.

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