School me on deck building, SLC lumber yards

[::: :::]

ISBD, nice flagstone!

[skifishbum]

american stone is way better than state
fuck the permit and the inspectors who cant install
cheap road base @ gravel pit on wasacth
have 1 patio w tight laid flag stone and paving sand
and another red sandstone laid over a couple " of road base a few " of large gravel
w/ peatmoss/dirt and wooly thyme "grout" lines

[Boissal]

Pour a concrete step from the door.

Compact the hell out of the gravel base and you will be very happy with flagstone or pavers. Rent a plate compactor. Remember to provide positive slope AWAY from the building 1/4"/ft absolute minimum so that water doesn't linger or worse subvert your foundation.

That's going to solve my issue with relocating the dirt I guess. If I have to go 6" or so deep for the grave/road base + sand for a 300 sq ft patio I'm going to have to move a lot of dirt, I can use some of it to build that slope from the house about 10' out.
Are you saying to pour a slab to support the stones? I'm tempted to dry lay the whole thing to limit the amount of work. I'm not finding too much info on how well that does in cold climates....

SFB, thanks for the info, seems like there are a lot of places selling stone in SLC with 0 info on pricing or availability...

[::: :::]

many people lay paving over a base slab...nothing wrong with it. if you want to keep it shallow, you need to grout it. if you want to sand set it over a slab, you still need 2" of sand btwn the pavers and the base slab, and the base slab still needs 4" of gravel below it (tho not necessarily compacted so thoroughly)

for pavers, i think with a well-compacted gravel base of 3/4-, you should be good to go ("3/4-" is the grade of gravel; it's very common)

in lieu of moving dirt, you could also build the paving up with the gravel and create the step at the edge of the patio with no step (or smaller step) at the house door (but you will want to mortar the edge so that it corrals all the sand set pavers within the perimeter)

HD has some decent DIY books on these types of projects