Planning an Outdoor Living Space in Argyle: What Your Lot Actually Changes
Most of my outdoor living calls in Argyle come in right about now. The heat finally breaks, people go sit in their backyard for the first time in three months, and they realize the backyard is not really set up for sitting in.
That is a good instinct to follow.
Fall and winter are the best months of the year to be outside in North Texas, and if you want a patio you can actually use this season, September is the month to start talking about it.
But here is the thing about Argyle that I do not think gets said enough. There is no such thing as a typical Argyle backyard. I work in six cities and Argyle is the one where two houses ten minutes apart can present completely different problems.
Argyle is really two different backyards
On one side you have the master planned neighborhoods. Harvest, Canyon Falls, and the newer sections around them. A lot of those lots run a fifth of an acre or less, the houses are close together, there is an HOA with a design review process, and the yard came with builder grade sod and not much else.
On the other side you have established Argyle. One to two and a half acres is common, and the legacy sections east of town run well past that. Mature post oaks and pecans, a septic system somewhere under the grass, no city sewer, and a lot more freedom about what you build.
Same town, same soil, completely different project. So the first question I ask is not what you want. It is which of those two you are standing in.
If you are on an acre or more
Acreage sounds like the easy version of this project, because nobody is standing over your shoulder telling you where you can and cannot build. In my experience it is the harder one. The limits are still there, they are just buried in the ground instead of written down in a design guideline.
Scale is what people get wrong first
A twelve by fourteen patio looks generous on a quarter acre lot. Put that same patio on two acres and it looks like a postage stamp somebody dropped in a field. The space around it swallows it.
Big lots need bigger footprints and they need something to anchor against. A patio that runs off the back of the house and stops in open grass never feels finished. A patio that works up against a tree line, a slope, a wall, or a fire feature has an edge, and edges are what make an outdoor room feel like a room.
On acreage I would rather build one well proportioned space with a real boundary than three small ones scattered around.
Your septic system decides more than you think
If you are on acreage out here, odds are good you are on an aerobic septic system rather than a city sewer line. That system has a tank, a spray field or drain field, and access lids, and none of it can go under concrete or pavers.
I have walked properties where the only flat, shaded, obvious spot for a patio was sitting directly on top of the spray field. That is not a small correction. If you have got a copy of your septic permit or the as built drawing from when the system went in, pull it out before we start drawing anything.
If you cannot find it, Denton County keeps the on site sewage facility records, and it is worth the phone call. Building over a drain field is the kind of mistake you pay for twice, once when you pour it and again when you tear it out.
Also worth thinking about: aerobic systems with spray heads will water your patio furniture if you put the seating in the wrong place. That is a solvable problem, but it is a lot cheaper to solve on paper.
Trees are the asset and the constraint
The mature canopy is half the reason people buy in Argyle, and it is the thing I am most careful around. Trenching, excavating, and driving equipment through the root zone can kill a big oak, and the tree usually does not tell you for two or three years. By then nobody connects it to the patio.
Rough rule of thumb, a tree's critical root zone extends about a foot out for every inch of trunk diameter. So a thirty inch pecan wants thirty feet of clearance where you are not cutting, compacting, or grading. That does not mean you cannot build near it. It means the approach has to change, and sometimes the footprint moves eight feet to the left.
The Town of Argyle also has a tree preservation ordinance, and there are situations where removing a protected tree requires a permit and a mitigation plan. The rules read differently depending on the property and how it is classified, so before anything mature comes down I would call the Town and ask rather than assume.
Utilities have to travel
On a small lot, the patio is fifteen feet from the house and everything is easy. On acreage, if you want the fire pit and seating area out by the tree line where the view is, you are now running electric for lighting, gas if you want a gas feature, and water if there is anything to irrigate out there. That distance is real money, and it is the line item that surprises people most on big lot projects.
It is not a reason to build close to the house if the good spot is farther out. It is a reason to decide early, because the trenching happens once.
If you are in Harvest, Canyon Falls, or a newer neighborhood
Smaller lots come with the opposite situation. The ground is usually cooperative, the utilities are close, and there is no septic field to work around. What you are working around instead is other people. A fence line twenty feet away, a neighbor's window, a grading plan the builder set, and an HOA with an opinion about materials.
The fence line is your ceiling
On a smaller lot the design problem is the opposite one. You are not trying to fill space, you are trying to make the space you have feel like more than it is. That usually means going vertical instead of wide. A pergola or covered structure, a raised planting bed along the back fence, a low seat wall that doubles as seating so you are not eating the whole yard with furniture.
The other thing that helps is not paving the entire yard. It is tempting when the lot is small, but a patio with some planted edge to it reads bigger than wall to wall concrete, because your eye has somewhere to go.
HOA review comes before town permits
In the master planned neighborhoods you have got two approvals to clear, not one, and the HOA architectural review usually needs to happen first. Materials, colors, structure heights, and fence attachments are all common review items, and turnaround is not instant. Get that submitted early.
I have seen HOA review add three weeks to a project that had no other holdups.
Drainage matters more when the houses are close
When lots are tight, whatever water you push off a new patio has to go somewhere, and somewhere is usually your neighbor. Newer neighborhoods are graded to a plan, and a patio built without respecting that grade can undo it.
Any hardscape we build gets pitched to move water away from the foundation and into a path that does not end at a fence line.
What applies either way
A few things do not care how big your lot is. These are the least interesting part of any conversation about outdoor living, which is exactly why they get skipped, and they are the ones that separate a patio that holds up from one that does not.
The clay.
North Texas clay swells when it is wet and shrinks when it is dry, and that movement is what cracks slabs and heaves pavers into a wave. The fix is not exotic. It is proper excavation, a compacted base of the right depth, and edge restraint that actually holds. The base is the part nobody sees and the part that determines whether the patio looks the same in eight years.
Permits.
Argyle requires permits for a lot of construction work, and requirements for detached structures like a pavilion or covered outdoor kitchen are stricter than most people expect, including setbacks that can be substantial on the larger zoning districts. The Town also requires contractors to register annually before doing work inside town limits. That is a fair question to ask anybody you are getting a bid from.
Irrigation.
Almost every hardscape project runs into sprinkler lines. Heads end up buried under the new patio, zones get cut in half, and coverage patterns stop making sense once there is a structure in the middle of them. Rerouting heads and capping lines is part of the build, not an afterthought, which is one advantage of hiring somebody who does the irrigation work too rather than coordinating two crews.
Why now is the right time to start
Two reasons.
The first is use. Late October through March is when a fire pit and a covered patio actually earn their keep here. If you start the conversation in November, you are looking at a finished space in late winter and you have given up most of the season.
The second is scheduling. Fall is the busiest stretch of the year for hardscape in North Texas, because it is the only stretch where the weather cooperates for both the crew and the concrete. Design, approvals, and any HOA or town review take time before a shovel moves.
Starting that in September is what puts you on the calendar for a fall build instead of a spring one.
Getting started
The first visit is mostly me walking the property with you and asking questions. Where does the sun hit in the afternoon, where does water run after a storm, where is the septic, what do you actually picture yourself doing out here. The design follows from that, not the other way around.
We build patios, fire features, retaining walls, pergolas, and outdoor kitchens across Argyle and the surrounding area. You can see more about what that outdoor living and hardscape work includes, or read more about the areas we cover on the Argyle page.
If you want a space you can use this fall, now is the time. Get a quote and let's go look at the yard.
Rob Dilts
Owner
RD Services
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