Base work for Travertine Stairs?

[toffeeapple]

Hi all,

I am putting stairs in instead of the stepping stones for our front yard and hoping to extend it to the door which means to change the current tiles to the same Travertine.

Would someone be able to assist in guiding me on the base work prior to and if it's best to lay timber sleepers as a base instead of concrete?

This is the inspiration 

   

[Dave-1]

Good Evening @toffeeapple 

Going through the steps that have been mentioned I would head towards @JacobZ and @MitchellMc's suggestions.

My main reason for shying away from bessa block bases is because my old steps/retaining wall was made of Bessa blocks sitting on compacted soil. They had developed cracks in the mortar and even tho functional I fear that having tiles on top will lead to the tiles cracking unless you have a concrete foundation as @JacobZ, @MitchellMc  and @Nailbag have mentioned.

When I was trying to work out step heights and depths for a set of steps I actually carried a tape meausure around with me and "meausured" a whole bunch of steps. You havnt mentioned the distance and drop of your steps so its a but hard to figure how many you need. You could have a longer top path to accomodate the steps (compared to a deeper depth of each step) that can be a pain to use.

Dave

[toffeeapple]

Thank you for all your replies.

We have the versawall blocks currently for the existing retaining wall. 

We went to the shop and purchased a couple of versawall blocks and corner. Our idea is to put retaining wall as a decorative piece (not actually retaining anything) on the right hand side where I did a render of the mulch would be. However, we realized that it is not double faced and it would take up too much space and leave very little for the stairs.

Now we are actually stuck on what to do in this space - we definitely wants stairs using the versawall block but just unsure what to do on the right hand side because of the driveway (if anyone parks there and open their door, it may hit the wall if not careful.

Any help with ideas is appreciated!

[Dave-1]

Good Evening @toffeeapple 

How about keeping the vessablock style you want but instead of a whole retaining wall, have it step down at either the same height as each step you go with or a little higher? It will allow doors to not be knocked when opened plus not make teh path feel so narrow.

Dave

[MitchellMc]

@toffeeapple,

Perhaps you could add a protective bumper to the wall so the door doesn't get damaged.

Mitchell

[Nailbag]

Hi @toffeeapple 

Are you able to send through a full-view render of both sides to get a better understanding of both sides, perhaps with a dimension of the driveway width? My first thought is if it would be fairly common for cars to be parked where the doors could be easily damaged on the right side, then some form of protection such as what @MitchellMc suggested. But then how precise would the cars need to be parked for a door to hit the safety pad? And aesthetically how would that or multiples look? Maybe some form of artificial foliage along the length may suffice? 

Nailbag

[toffeeapple]

Hi All,

Essentially what I am trying to achieve is to have a narrowish retaining wall same width as the pillar where the porch is. to run on the right hand side of the steps as I will be installing retaining wall blocks and steps in the middle.

Like this:

Because I am using the versawall block split face - it's working out to be too wide.

I did see this online and was wondering what the workaround is to get this result. Essentially we want the split face all 3 face.

[MitchellMc]

Perhaps you would need to make the retaining wall half the width of the pillar @toffeeapple, so your wall is kept away from the edge of the driveway.

Mitchell