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Landscape Design Porches & Decks

Covered Patio/Porch Advice Needed Please

5 years ago

We are building a house and want to have a covered veranda/porch built behind the Great Room during construction. Our first choice would be for the flooring of the veranda to be pavers.

The general design idea is similar to the two covered porches in this photo. Our home is not nearly this large!!

However, because the lot is slightly sloped and the builder is bringing in fill from adjacent lots to grade the backyard, he said we can not do a covered patio at the time of construction because it will sink due to settling of the ground. However, if we want the roof to be integrated into the house roof system, we have to do it during initial construction and our only option is to use composite decking material for the floor - he uses TimberTech. We would very much like to have the floor of the covered area to be paver or concrete with aggregate stone. I personally do not want a "deck look".

We would be okay with waiting a year for the ground to settle in order to have a concrete/aggregate stone or paver patio but the issue is integrating the roof into the roof system of the house. Our builder said it would be much more expensive to build a roof over the patio a year down the road.

1) Could anyone tell me what our options are in this situation to have a covered area connected to the house without using composite decking but still having a roof integrated into the roof system?

2) Is it actually more expensive to wait and do a concrete/aggregate stone patio or paver patio with a roof in a year vs. doing composite decking with a roof now?

3) Would it be safe to do this given the fact that the patio would be on top of fill even if we wait for a year for the ground to settle or are we at risk of having the patio sink?

3) If our only option is to use composite decking material for the floor, could we do a stone "skirting" around the composite material to make it look less "deck-like" and more substantial? See photo below:

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Comments (3)

PRO
Revolutionary Gardens
5 years ago
Have you already broken ground, or are you still in planning stages? Hard to give specific advice without seeing your floorplan and elevation drawings, but here are some general thoughts in response to your questions:

1) if the foundation hasn't yet been poured, the builder can pour a wall across the outside edge of the patio (I'm assuming your patio will be in a U-shaped alcove like in the picture above). Then the void underneath is filled with 3/4" clean gravel, and the patio is poured and tied into the wall with rebar.

It's also possible to drill into the foundation wall and "pin" the patio to the house with rebar. The issue is that as the backfill settles, you get the sort of big voids that critters love.

2) In many cases, your builder gets better pricing from subs because of the volume of business they do with them. That said, unless it's a ginormous area you're probably talking a price difference in the hundreds of dollars on concrete. If you're doing stone or pavers, the builder's guys are not always the best.

3) A year? We find that the area around the foundation of a new home continues to settle for 5-7 years. There are a couple of ways you can have the patio built where settling isn't an issue. You can excavate all the way to the house footer (undisturbed soil) and backfill with gravel all the way up to where you need to pour the patio, Or, the contractor can dig to the house footer and either pour concrete support piers with sonotubes, or they can build support walls. In either case, the patio slab is tied to those supports with rebar.

4) Depends on what the wall behind the stone will bear on. If you do a lick and stick veneer stone over concrete board screwed to a stud frame lagged into the deck posts (and a nailer on the house walls) you should be fine. But if you try to do something that bears on the ground, you'll have the same settling issues - unless, again, you dig all the way down to the house footer.

Stuff like this is why I suggest hiring a landscape designer long before the house is built :) It's not that the builder is doing anything shady, they just try and stay within what they're comfortable with.
baseballmom94
Original Author
5 years ago
Thank you, David, I really appreciate your detailed and thoughtful response. No, we have not broken ground yet. I will talk to the builder about talking directly with the landscape company about this before we break ground.

Here is my floor plan and elevation drawings, if that helps at all. Thank you again!

Baseballmom94's Home Ideas · More Info

Baseballmom94's Home Ideas · More Info
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You could skirt a deck with stone or formed/tinted concrete or brick or anything else you choose, but I don't know of any decking that doesn't look like decking. But if the soil won't support a covered patio, how will it support a covered deck? It's true that fill is less stable than native soil, but if the lot is only "slightly sloped," your builder shouldn't have to dig down too terribly far to get to stable subgrade for the foundation. Is this a budget limitation? Theoretically you could build a deck and top it with cement board and pavers, but that won't feel as stable underfoot as a slab. I'd consult with a structural engineer and/or soils engineer to get a better answer on what's actually possible.
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