If you are completing new construction, or have decided to raise the level of entertaining elegance in your Calgary area backyard, there’s nothing like a brick patio to enhance the beauty and versatility of your property. Mirage Landscaping has a number of years experience in installing brick patios of all types.
Why Choose Brick?
First of all, it’s durable. The cobblestone streets of Old Montreal aren’t laid with natural stones…they are laid with brick, much of it in service since the late 1600s. Compared to some parts of the world, those bricks are “young”! For a lack of concrete materials, the Romans built bath complexes in England from bricks fired in the portable kilns of the Legions. Buildings dating back over 100 or more years are still regularly demolished for seismic safety or other issues, in such a way that their bricks can be recycled. A properly laid and maintained brick patio will easily outlast your stick frame house.
Brick has been a popular building material for thousands of years precisely because it conveys a sense of timelessness. The look of a well planned and well-executed brick patio space will never go out of style. The handsome look of brick, featuring a baked in colour integrity that will weather but never fade, complements houses of almost any architectural style. Brick can look rustic to downright ultramodern depending on the style of brick and the layout chosen.
The Adaptability of Brick
The customizable nature of brick is perhaps its best trait. The kiln fired colour of clay bricks is predominately influenced by the chemical and mineral content of the raw clay. Other factors that determine the final colour of bricks include the firing temperature, and the atmosphere present in the kiln itself. For instance, a pink coloured brick is the result of a higher iron content. Predominately white or yellow bricks contain a higher lime content.
Most bricks in North America are kiln baked in a tunnel oven to various finishes of the colour “brick red” as the kiln temperature is regulated for that result. The raw brick can trend toward turning shades from dark red through purple and finally to brown or grey depending on the intensity and the duration of the heat applied. Calcium silicate bricks have a wider range of shades and colours, due to the presence of lime, quartz, and other colourant rock constituents added to them. These bricks tend to be toward the lighter end of the colour scale and can appear to be yellow, off grey, or even white.
Beautiful Brick Patios: Mirage Landscaping Calgary
Whatever the composition or colour of your brick is, the weight of it in a load mounts rapidly and where you want to have your brick patio sited is going to require some forethought. First, wherever the brick is going to be laid needs to have soil compaction and leveling. You don’t want to be facing a situation where your custom brick barbeque begins sinking into a part of your lawn. That’s why we take pride in the amount of prep work we will put into your brick patio. You will appreciate how precisely level everything is and how none of the bricks will feel loose, or “raised.”
Now that the fundamentals are out of the way, the fun part begins — design. You can accomplish things with brick construction that look plain when done in concrete. Your brick patio can feature a fire pit in the middle, surrounded by built in bench seating surfaces. If you’d rather, a fountain or water features can be the focus. Do you fancy an outdoor pizza oven? With brick construction such touches are easy to create. Whether you are into grilling over open flames or want a discretely hidden propane cooking insert for less clean up, it can all be done with brick, including hooded chimney structures to take smoke well over the heads of your party.
If you want an entertaining space to match your Calgary area home of your dreams, consider using brick, and consider using Mirage Landscaping. We will assist you in every step of the process, from initial design, to material selection, to the finishing touches. At Mirage Landscaping, we have completed many brick installations for our clients over the years. We have the trucks, the manpower, and most importantly, the skill, to execute any brick patio vision you may have.
Contact Mirage Landscaping for a free quote on your project.
