How to Bid Paver Installation Jobs
Five steps from an address to a bid that holds its margin: measure, walk the site, take off the material, price it, present it. Worked all the way through on a two-car driveway.
Measure the footprint before you drive out
Every number in a paver bid hangs off the square footage: the pallets, the tons of stone, the crew days, the price. So the area is the one input that has to be right, and the one most bids guess. The homeowner paces it. The last contractor's number is on a napkin. A tape on a lawn that is not a patio yet gets you a rectangle that the patio will not be.
Trace it on satellite imagery instead. In SurfaceMeasure you search the address, click around the driveway or the space the patio will fill, and draw the fire pit, the planter and the tree well as cutouts so they come out of the order. The result lands within 1–3% of a tape where the edge is visible and takes under ten minutes for a whole property. You have the area before the site visit, which turns the visit into a soil, access and drainage check instead of a measuring trip.
Measure sections separately when they will be priced or built separately: the driveway and its flare at the street, the walkway to the door, the patio and the step-down. A bid that shows the customer which part costs what wins more often than one number.
Walk the site, with a probe and a tape for the edges
The satellite gives you the area. The site visit gives you everything the area cannot: what is under the surface and how the material gets to it. Six things to bring home.
Access for the machine
Can a skid steer reach the work, or does every ton of stone go through a 36-inch gate by wheelbarrow? This one answer can double the crew hours. Note where the pallets and the stone pile can land.
What is there now
Lawn, an old slab, an old paver patio, or fill. A concrete driveway has to be broken out and hauled, $550-$1,700 for a typical one, and that is its own line, never a rate adjustment.
The ground
Probe it. Clay, fill and freeze-thaw ground want the deep end of the base range, 8-12 inches under a driveway, and usually geotextile fabric under the stone. Soft ground you do not price for is a base you rebuild for free.
Drainage and fall
Where does the water go now, and where will it go once the surface is hard? A patio against the house needs fall away from it; a driveway needs the street. A drain or a channel is a line.
Edges and elevations
Which edges are held by the house, a wall or a curb, and which are open and need restraint? Where does the surface meet a door threshold, a garage slab, a step? Each transition is a cut and a decision.
The pattern and the border
Confirm the layout with the customer standing on it. Herringbone against running bond is 5% more pavers and a slower day. A soldier course in a second colour is a second set of cuts and a second pallet.
Take off the material
Material is the floor under the bid, and on pavers it is a high floor: about $7-$9 per square foot on a concrete-paver patio before anyone lifts a shovel. Take it off properly and you know the lowest number you can write before you think about labor.
Pavers
area × (1 + waste) ÷ sq ft each
10% simple, 15% patterned
Base stone
area × depth ÷ 324 = yd, × 1.265, × 1.4 t
4-6 inches patio, 8-12 inches driveway
Bedding sand
area ÷ 324 = yd, × 1.10, × 1.3 t
1 inch, coarse concrete sand
Polymeric sand
area ÷ sq ft per bag
75-100 sq ft per bag, 30-60 sq ft wide joints
Edge restraint
open perimeter, in feet
only the edges no wall, house or curb holds
Spoil
area × dig depth ÷ 324, × 1.2 swell
base + sand + paver, less any existing grade
Use the base depth for the ground you probed in step 2, not the one in the brochure. Then price the material at what you will pay for this job: pavers by the pallet, stone at $20-$45 a ton and sand at $25-$40, delivered, not bagged. The paver installation cost calculator runs the whole takeoff from square feet, use, paver size and pattern in one pass.
Price it twice: by the rate, then by the costs
The first pass is the market pass. The install is area × your installed rate: concrete pavers at $10-$20 per square foot on a patio and $15-$25 on a driveway, brick at $15-$30, natural stone at $25-$50. Then the things the rate does not cover, on their own lines: breaking out an old slab, fabric, a border course, steps and seat walls, drainage, sealing.
The second pass is the one that keeps you in business. Add up what the job costs you: the pavers, stone, sand, polymeric and edging from step 3; loaded crew hours for excavation, base, screeding, laying, cutting and sanding, about 0.10 per square foot on a simple patio, 0.125 on a driveway, and a good deal more with hand-carry access; the machine, the compactor and the saw; spoil haul and disposal. Add your overhead and the profit you need. If the market-pass total does not clear that number, something in the first pass is wrong for this job. Usually it is the hours, and usually the reason is the gate.
Two rules that survive every site. Never price a driveway on a patio base, because the deeper dig is where the hours and the tons are. And never let a slab removal or a border course hide inside the square-foot rate, because the next job will not have one and the rate will be wrong for it too.
Present a bid the customer can read
The lowest bid does not win most paver work. The clearest one does, because a homeowner spending five figures wants to see what is under the pavers, and a low bid with no base depth on it reads as a shortcut. Six things on the page.
- 1Scope by line: the install with area, paver and pattern; base depth in inches; edging in feet; removal, fabric, border, steps and drainage each on their own line.
- 2Product named: manufacturer, paver, colour, thickness, and the joint sand, with the note that the whole order comes from one production run.
- 3The base spelled out: excavation depth, compacted crushed stone in lifts, one inch of concrete sand, edge restraint on every open edge.
- 4Schedule with the weather clause: base is not compacted wet and polymeric sand is not set in rain, so dates move with the forecast.
- 5Exclusions: utilities and irrigation not marked, unforeseen ground, permits unless listed, and anything under a parked car on the day.
- 6Terms: deposit to order the pavers, balance on completion, pallet pricing confirmed at order, and a 30-day validity.
A satellite image of the property with the traced outline on it, attached to the bid, does more for trust than any paragraph. It shows the customer you measured their driveway, not a typical one.
Worked Example: A Two-Car Paver Driveway
Existing gravel drive, open ground, machine access from the street, 6 × 9 in concrete pavers in herringbone on a 10-inch base. Measured from satellite at 640 sq ft: a 14 × 40 ft drive plus the flare at the street.
The bid
$21.84 per square foot all-in. Excavation and spoil haul are inside the install rate because the ground is open and the machine can reach it.
The cost check, install line only
After 15% overhead that is about $1,800 net. The same job through a side gate by wheelbarrow is 40 more crew hours, and at $20 the margin is gone. Access is the rate.
Hours: a three-person crew, one day to excavate and haul, one to place and compact the base in lifts, one to screed and lay, a fourth for the border, the cuts and the sand. The rate table this job was priced from, and the two other sizes, are on the paver cost per square foot page.
Six Ways a Paver Bid Loses Money
None of these are rate problems. They are all things that happened before the rate was applied.
Bidding the customer's square footage
Their number is a pace count or a guess at a patio that is not built yet. Measure it yourself before a pallet is ordered. A 10% area miss on a 640 sq ft driveway is 200 pavers and 3.5 tons of stone.
A patio base under a driveway
Cars need 8-12 inches of compacted stone and an 80 mm paver. Bid it at a patio's 4-6 inches and you have underpriced the dig, the stone, the haul and the compaction in one move.
Running-bond waste on a herringbone job
10% covers a grid. Herringbone and diagonal layouts need 15%, and the shortfall arrives from a different production run in a colour that does not quite match.
Hours from an open site on a gated one
Every ton and every pallet through a 36-inch gate goes in by wheelbarrow. Walk the route the material will take before you write the labor line, and price the route.
The slab hidden in the rate
Breaking out an old driveway is $550-$1,700 of work that most jobs do not have. Folded into the square-foot rate it makes every other bid too high, and this one too low.
A one-number bid
A homeowner spending five figures wants to see the base depth, the paver, the pattern and the edging. A bid with lines, inches and a traced image gets a deposit. A single number gets shopped.
Paver Bid Questions
Rates, waste, margins and what to write on the bid.
Measure the area, walk the site, take off the material, price it, and present it. Pavers are area plus waste divided by the size of one paver. Base is area × depth in cubic yards, ordered loose at about 1.27× and 1.4 tons a yard; bedding sand is a one-inch layer; polymeric sand is by the bag; edge restraint is by the open foot. Add crew hours at about 0.10 per square foot on a simple patio and 0.125 on a driveway, plus equipment, spoil haul and your margin, then check the total against area × your installed rate.
Present it by the square foot, because that is how customers compare bids, and check it by the hour before it goes out. Area × rate is the market pass; pavers, stone, sand, edging, crew hours, machine and overhead are the cost pass. When the two disagree, the hourly view is the honest one: it is telling you the rate is wrong for this site, usually because of access or the base. The 2026 rate ranges by paver and use are on the paver cost per square foot page.
10% on top of the net area for running bond and simple grids, 15% for herringbone, diagonal and fan layouts, and more again when a border course in a second colour means two sets of cuts. Order the whole job from one production run: a top-up from a different lot does not match, and a visible seam is a callback.
Trace it on satellite imagery. SurfaceMeasure gives you the area within 1–3% of a tape where the edge is visible, treats an L-shape as one shape and a fire pit as a cutout, and for a patio that does not exist yet you trace the lawn it is replacing. Do it before you drive out, and the site visit becomes a soil, access and drainage check with the number already in hand.
Work it from costs, not from a rule of thumb. Add pavers with waste, base stone, sand, polymeric, edging, loaded crew hours, the machine, spoil haul and disposal, then overhead and the profit you need. If rate × area does not clear that number, the rate is wrong for this site or the site is wrong for you. On most paver jobs the surprise is hours, and the reason is access.
Thirty days is typical, with two things written in: paver pricing and availability are confirmed at order, because pallet prices and colour lots move, and the schedule moves with the weather, because base cannot be compacted wet and polymeric sand cannot be set in rain. Both sentences save a phone call later.
Paver Guides and Tools
The calculator, the rate, and the count.
Measure the Next Patio Before You Drive to It
Trace the footprint on satellite, set your rate once, and send a branded quote with the traced image on it. 3 free measurements, no card required.