Solutions for Raised Patios

Whether you will need planning permission or not to create your raised terrace patio will depend, among other things, on the height, the surface, the type of patio you envision, and its location. We advise you to contact your city’s council before starting any construction work to check the local building codes that apply to your situation.

Must-have tools to build a raised patio on pedestals usually include:

• A spirit level
• A masonry ruler
• A chalk line
• A wet saw
• A laser
• A vibratory plate compactor

Before installing any patio pedestals, it is important to stabilise the ground to ensure the longevity of your wooden deck or paved patio. To establish a solid base for your raised patio, the ground must be levelled, even and free of any obstacles.

On a concrete slab, ensure you remove any debris that could hinder the installation and/or stability of the pedestals.

On unprepared ground, minor earthworks will be required. First, you will need to excavate the ground to create a level base and ensure the ground is properly levelled. The installation of a geotextile membrane and the creation of a base layer made of crushed stones are then essential to ensure that the patio pedestals can be installed correctly.

If installing on a waterproof surface, comply with DTU 43.1.

If you are using Elevo® pedestals, ground preparation is minimal and simply requires the installation of a geotextile membrane to ensure proper drainage of rainwater.

A base layer composed of 0/31.5 crushed stone must be laid to level the ground. This must then be compacted using a vibratory plate compactor.

Depending on the nature of the soil, a draining foundation layer can be laid using 30/60 or 40/80 crushed stone.

If the resulting surface is still uneven, we recommend laying a bed using quarry sand or 0/4 crushed sand. This will make it easier to install low profile pedestals.

We recommend using the vibratory plate compactor between each layer.

You can watch our video on ground preparation.

The finishing touches on a raised patio are essential to ensure your patio looks neat and finished.

There are several options to finish the edges of your raised patio:

• If you wish to extend your patio into a garden area, you can do so using garden edging strip, for example, and our Modulesca modular garden steps to descend from your patio into your garden.
• If you are building a raised decking patio, we offer a lateral riser support for wooden decks.
• For finishing a raised paved patio with cut tiles, we have a lateral riser support and a side finishing plate.
• If you wish to create an edge without cut tiles, we sell clip-on finishing profiles in various colours for a both practical and neat finished edge.

The advantage of raised patio built on pedestals is precisely that this installation requires neither adhesive nor screws. The pedestals do not need to be fixed the ground. You can dismantle the deck in no time at all and without damaging the ground.

However, for wooden decks, it is necessary to fix the joists to the pedestals in order to secure the whole structure. Subsequently, the decking boards must be fixed to the joists using through-bolts or hidden-decking fixings such as Fixego®.

The main constraint when building a raised patio is to leave enough space under construction to install all the necessary accessories.

Our advice is to leave a minimum clearance of 3 cm under the patio slab.

NB: If the slab has a slope, use self-levelling pedestals, which will compensate for up to 5%. The same applies if the surface of the slab is uneven.

Our patio pedestals have a crush resistance of over 1 tonne. However, the weight that a wooden or paved patio can support does not depend solely on the strength of the pedestals.

Each type of flooring has its own load-bearing capacity. We therefore advise you to check with your timber or paver supplier for more precise information.

More generally, if you are planning to place a heavy item on your raised garden terrace, such as a hot tub, we recommend opting for our PROFILDECK® solution (aluminium joists), which will ensure better weight distribution across the structure of the raised patio.

Our paver or timber decking pedestals come with a 10-year guarantee, based on our terms and conditions of sale and our installation guidelines. Furthermore, we have never been aware of any deterioration in the pedestals over time.

On another note, when walking on a raised patio, you may feel a slight sliding or clicking sensation. To remedy this, we strongly recommend using our isolation pad, to be placed on the paving slabs, as well as our rubber cushions, to be placed on each pedestal head. These two products, made from recycled tyres, cushion movement on the patio and reduce noise and resonance.

To find out more, please take a look at our products: the isolation pad and the rubber cushion.

Building a raised patio on pedestals has many advantages, but it is also important to be aware of a few cons – or rather, constraints:

• A certain amount of space is required beneath the concrete slab to install the patio on the pedestals. If the ground is too low, we recommend using Jouplast® products such as our cross slab, a stabilising spacer designed to ensure the slabs are laid with consistent spacing.
• An area with lots of gaps beneath a patio could attract pests or flying insects. However, by choosing Jouplast® pedestals, you are guaranteed that water drains away properly, preventing mosquitoes or flies from breeding.
• The cost of the patio and its materials should be taken into account when deciding to build a raised patio.

Surfaces such as concrete slabs, ceramic tiles, exotic wood or imitation wood decking will cost the same whether for a raised patio or a traditional patio laid with mortar, glued or screwed down.

The cost of the patio pedestals is an additional factor compared to a traditional installation. However, they are versatile and easy enough to use to offset the cost of having a traditional patio installed by a professional landscaper. Thus, in just one day and with a single person, it is possible to build a raised patio on pedestals of approximately 20m².