Home Improvement → [Masonry] Sunken tiles at our front steps

Thank you, tschmidt!

We have made great progress.
To solve the step issue I am considering going DIY.
There is a 6 foot by 6 foot porch area that needs to be set with stone and concrete.

Any tips on how doable this would be?
Just put down a half inch of concrete and put the stone on top. Easy job? Yeah or nay?

I am trying to find some options for the last leg of this project. It would be ideal if we could simply have a 6' by 6'
Slab of precast concrete positioned on our porch.

I suppose that we might need about half an inch of concrete for the base of the slab. With one nice single piece it would all be flat and the job could be done quickly and conveniently.

Would this be a feasible approach?
Comments please!

1 cubic foot of concrete weighs 150 pounds?
I would need 18 cubic feet and it would need to support a huge slab of precast and wind up being level. I wonder if there are tricks that make this all work out. Perhaps they use jacks along with preset depth spacers.

The pavers in front of our garage have sunk about 2 inches.
This prevents rainwater from reaching the drain and possibly leading to damage to the foundation. It would be expensive to reset the pavers on our entire driveway to repair this. Instead it would be cheaper and much easier to simply throw down a bag or two of asphalt. This would level out the driveway near the drain allowing the water to flow into the drain without destroying the pavers. Does water seep through asphalt or flow over it?

I was surprised to see that a fifty pound bag of asphalt only costs $15. We could solve our problem for less than 100 bucks! Resetting our entire driveway would cost thousands.

Comments?

Progress is being made!
The steps are now complete.

One other problem that I would like to solve is the sunken pavers by the garage door.
When it rains the water does not make it to the existing drain because the pavers have sunk.
To do a partial patch it would have cost $2000 to raise up the pavers. The full driveway might have
cost $20,000. And then they would probably sink down again.

I think there might be a cheaper workaround hammer drive into the concrete drain.
I would need to go through 6 1/2" of rebar reinforced concrete. In one of the pictures above the two red ovals show my first attempts with a 1/4" masonry drill bit in a hammer drill. I drilled the bottom one first and hit the rebar about
2 1/4" in (2 1/2" from top of concrete). I then went about 4 3/4" in with the drill hole shown in the red oval toward the top (1 1/4" from top). With the second hole I missed the rebar. I was told that there would likely be rebar on both sides about 2" in.

This is a great start!

My idea now is to use a 1" drill bit on the right side near the garage door.
From my reading online, a 2 inch pipe (vertical) can carry about 55 gallons per minute.
While a 1 inch pipe which has one quarter of the surface area would only drain about 15 gallons per minute.

The area that accumulates the water before the drain has a volume of about 70 gallons.
A torrential downpour would drop 3700 liters per hour onto our driveway.
This is 60 liters per minute (16 gallons per minute).

I would love to put perhaps 4 1 inch drains on the right side of the concrete. This is the side where the water naturally drains.

This would give me 60 gallons per minute of drainage.
If I had enough drainage to keep up with the incoming water that would be great! As it is now about 7 gallons per minute appears to be absorbed. I would prefer to avoid this so that I could protect the concrete.

One neat idea that I thought of is that I could actually remove the pavers on the right hand side and drill in below the paver level to keep the drainage concealed. I could put on a strainer to avoid excessive grime from getting through.
Possibly I could even place a metal drainage tube inside of the drill hole to keep everything dry.

One thing that is puzzling me is why this garage drainage unit was built so strong. I guess that this 6 inches of concrete goes down perhaps 5 feet and it is rebarred and perhaps even prestressed. Straight concrete gives you 2500 psi; Rebarred gives you 4000 psi, I am not even sure how much prestressed gives. It seems possibly somewhat excessive. Is this structural strength actually needed. When I look at it, it is not obvious to me that this concrete experiences any loads. Aside from car traffic, there does not appear to be any structural loading onto this concrete. Total mystery to me where the loading would be other than vehicles.

I have already received a negative opinion on the drilling as it was thought that such drilling would weaken the concrete. I am not sure whether that will actually be a problem.

Comments are welcome.

In the top photo, the pavers have sunk down by 6 1/2 inches on the right side. I would like to possibly take up the pavers on this side and drill at a 45 degree angle downward of level perhaps 7-8 inches from the top of the concrete and breach the concrete on the inside about 15 inches from the top of the concrete. I would need a drill bit 10 inches long for that. I am not sure where the rebar will be on the ends, though I know that there is rebar probably running level at 2 1/2" from the top after I hit it on the first round on the front side.
If I had a better idea of how thick the rebar was, I might be able to map out its locations.

I just do not see any structural reason not to do this. A vehicle could not access this part of the concrete and apply a load. There does not seem to be any compressive loading that would occur in this area.
4 or 5 1 inch holes would give me a great deal of drainage and this would be an easy and cheap fix for my problem.