This worked out very well for me, I think, installing a stainless rail into pavers. Like most DIY scenarios there were of course lessons learned! Details follow for anyone interested, a bit of DIY and some rube Goldberg last-minute adjustments…..
I decided on a stainless steel rail, partly because I like the look of them and because I got one for $130, versus the saftron & similar ones that are over $500. After making a map of where I wanted it, I removed a few pavers and dug a hole for the cement that was approximately. a 12” cube – a few inches wider than that at the bottom where the “cube” drifts under adjacent sand and pavers. I tossed a few rebar rods into the mix as well. I used 3 60Lb bags of high strength secrete cement. Based on experts commenting in other threads, I probably should have used more, gone wider, and/or deeper, but the result does seem very solid.
I used 4” brass anchors, and in hindsight 6” ones would have been a better choice. Although the pavers are “somewhat” immovable, they aren’t as solid as the cement block/pad to be poured, so I decided to set the anchors fully into the cement and therefore below the pavers, which put them about 3” below the top of the paver deck. That’s due to 2.5” paver thickness plus ½” sand for re-leveling the pavers. I got lucky and found a #8 bonding wire coming off the mesh reinforcement, likely because the location begged for a rail there so perhaps they left the 12” bonding stub as a future possibility. If I had not found that bonding wire, I would probably have lifted more pavers and run a new #8 over to the side of the deck and connected to the other bonding by the equipment pad. I connected the bonding stub to both anchors, thinking perhaps one day a single pole rail or umbrella could be used, so why not connect to both anchors since I’m there. I also added 2 more wires that I pushed under adjacent pavers, beyond the cemented area, in case of need to access the bonding for some reason down the road.
Knowing that anchor drainage is important - and the anchors have tapered bottoms with a drain hole - I sunk a couple lengths of ½” pvc down into the sand far enough to be below the cement, each pvc tube below the intended location of the anchor. Some may ignore drainage I guess, but the news has recently carried many a story about the effects of standing water on concrete over time. I’m not trying to support a building with this, but the collapse of the surfside condo and some bridges came to mind.
To maintain the proper standard 8” on center distance between anchors I mounted the anchors to a short piece of treated wood. Getting that perfect was a challenge, given the tapered bottoms of the anchors, so that got fixed/adjusted as a last step while cement was wet. I wasn’t concerned with the exact location of the assembly (give or take ½”), just the height and the all-important 8” on center spec. It was a challenge to keep the anchors from sinking & tilting into the cement, LOL. But the PVC tubes below helped keep the correct height anyway. With the cement poured and wet, I slid a couple lengths of 1-1/2 PVC into the anchors (perfect 1.9” OD) and rigged/gear tied those tubes to heavy buckets to hold at the 8” centers, leveled, double checked, triple checked, etc., and having managed the occasional desire to panic.
48 hours later, all dried and good, time to add some sand and get the pavers drilled. Uh-oh, how to keep the sand from drifting into the anchors, so I made little cement dams around the anchors and let that dry – to almost the exact level I wanted the bottom of the pavers. I transferred the hole locations to the paver bottoms by putting a 5” length of the 1-1/2 PVC into the anchors with a bit of wet paint on top of the PVC, lowered the paver onto it, then raised the paver and drilled a pilot hoes from the bottom of the paver. With the pilot hole, from the top of the paver I could plot the 2-1/2” rim of the main hole and as well a location of a 1” hole offset to accommodate the anchor’s wedge bolt. Drill the little hole first of course, then the main hole. Knowing that a core drill rental is over $200/day, I got this set of masonry hole saws for $40 that worked well:
Amazon.com Best drilled with water stream, out in the yard or out someplace where a mess doesn’t matter!
Now of course the anchor wedge bolts are not on the surface where it would be easy to access, they are instead 3” below the surface. I was going to leave it that way, but getting a socket down there was tough because the rail escutcheon only can be raised for access by a few inches. You ideally want the wedge bolt on the surface! So I made 3” spacers out of ½” rigid copper and got stainless wedge bolts that were 3” longer than the original wedge bolts, 5” or 6” total I think. Worked perfectly!!
One of the last discoveries was that cement got into those pvc drain tubes (of course it did) so a long cement drill fixed that. They drain, if slowly. I suppose I could have done this in 2 or 3 days, but as a retired dabbler with other things interfering, I got it done in dribs and drabs over 2 to 3 weeks.
Thanks to those who commented here and in other threads with ideas. Going deep (eg 24x24x24) and coring all of it after pouring, along with use of a proper coring tool and alignment jig is one solution with other tips by
@robwas here:
Saftron Ladder anchor cups. Someone else (I can’t find the thread at the moment) suggested a much wider pad, perhaps 30x30 but shallower at 4 or 6” deep, and that would solve several problems, including the coring chore, the issue of the anchors trying to move around in deep wet cement, and the drainage issue. Thanks to
@newdude for the related video he posted at the bottom of this thread:
Best Practice - Installing Anchor Cups for Stair Railing in Pavers
Advance prep of a perfectly sized PVC stabilizing jig to insert topside while the cement dried would have helped too. The railing itself is a bit heavy to use as a stabilizer when cement is wet, and my railing wasn’t exactly 8” on center either (7-15/16) , so I kept the install at the 8” spec and just pulled the railing apart by 1/16 to install it. If I get motivated I plan to add a couple strategically placed anchors for dropping in one or two movable cantilever market umbrellas for ‘movable / adjustable shade’.
Pictures attached, questions welcome. Cheers!
