Hardscaping Built for Yelm and Thurston County

ND Brick Pavers is run from an office in Yelm. Our crews travel north to Tacoma and across Pierce County most weeks, but Yelm is home base, and jobs in Yelm, Rainier, Roy, and McKenna are close to where our trucks and equipment start the day. That makes site visits easy to schedule and lets us check on a job without a long drive.

We have 19 years in the trade and more than 425 completed projects. Every person on a job is an ND employee. Our Google rating is 4.7, and our Washington contractor license is NDBRIDB815M5.

USDA soil survey data maps most of Yelm and the open ground toward Rainier as Spanaway gravelly sandy loam, with Spanaway stony sandy loam in places. Spanaway soils are very deep and formed in glacial outwash, the sand and rounded gravel that meltwater spread across the plain when the ice sheet pulled back. USDA rates them somewhat excessively drained, with high saturated hydraulic conductivity. In plain terms, rain disappears into the ground fast.

The USDA description lists native vegetation that matches what longtime residents know as prairie: Douglas-fir and Oregon white oak with an understory that includes Idaho fescue and bracken fern. Near Roy, the survey shifts to Nisqually loamy sand, another very deep, fast-draining outwash soil whose native cover was prairie grasses, ferns, and mosses. Everett very gravelly sandy loam shows up on the slopes and terrace edges.

Fast-draining ground is good news for a paver base, with two cautions. The coarse gravel and cobble make digging slower and can leave an uneven subgrade, so we grade and compact carefully before base rock goes in. And because the native soil is loose, edge restraints need to be anchored well, or the outer rows can creep outward over time.

Not every lot in the area drains like the prairie. Along the Nisqually River near McKenna, the survey maps Puyallup silt loam, formed in recent river deposits on floodplains and low terraces. Nearby, McKenna gravelly silt loam carries a perched water table from the surface to about a foot down at times from November through April.

On those sites, a paver patio or driveway needs a different base plan: more depth, separation fabric between silt and base rock, and a way for water to leave the base. A permeable paver system that works well on Spanaway gravel can fail on McKenna silt because the water has nowhere to go. That is why we test before we design, even for a neighbor down the road.

Yelm has a permit step most cities do not. The Mazama pocket gopher is protected under the federal Endangered Species Act, and the City of Yelm screens land use applications on soils linked to gopher habitat. The city's list of more preferred soils includes Nisqually loamy fine sand, Spanaway gravelly sandy loam, and Indianola loamy sand, which covers much of the Yelm prairie.

The city's page says field screening runs only from June 1 to October 31, and site visits outside that window do not count. The whole parcel is reviewed, not just the footprint of the project. Projects can be released from further review for reasons that include a site already covered with impervious surfaces, slopes over 40 percent, or a location more than 300 feet from mapped gopher soils.

For a homeowner, the practical point is timing. If a Yelm project needs a land use approval and does not qualify for release, the review season can set the calendar. Replacing an existing driveway or patio is often simpler than building on open lawn or pasture. We help you find out early which case you are in.

The City of Yelm adopts the Department of Ecology's Stormwater Management Manual for Western Washington by reference. Under that manual, 2,000 square feet or more of new plus replaced hard surface, or 7,000 square feet or more of land disturbance, brings in the first five minimum requirements. Yelm's own stormwater chapter expects private roof, lot, and footing drainage to be infiltrated on the lot, with a pipe connection to the public system only where soils or other conditions prevent it.

On the gravel prairie, infiltrating clean runoff from a patio or driveway is usually easy: a gravel trench, a dry well, or a permeable paver field can handle it. Yelm's standards also cover rural frontage. Where a driveway crosses a roadside ditch, the culvert must be long enough to leave a 3 to 1 slope from the edge of the driveway to the bottom of the ditch.

Lots here tend to be larger than in Tacoma, and many are rural. The work reflects that.

NOAA does not publish a 1991-2020 normals station in Yelm. The nearest airport station, Olympia Airport, about 14 miles to the west-northwest, averages 50.62 inches of precipitation a year, with November through January the wettest months and July the driest. On Spanaway gravel the rain soaks in, so winter work is more practical here than on till or silt. On McKenna and river-bottom soils we still prefer the drier months for excavation.