This is turning into the year of the backyard improvements, and one of the things we'd like to do is a small addition to the concrete patio in the back. It's nothing much - just 5'x10', but I'd like to get it in sooner rather than later as we're also going to be having a patio cover constructed . Any tips? At 4" deep, I should need around 25 80lb bags. Would it be more practical to have a truck come out? It won't be able to drive to the area so even with a truck we'll need to huff the actual material to the backyard. But it still seems like it would save a bunch of time over dealing with 25 sacks of concrete. Of course it would probably cost more too.

I've got to take off in the morning for a business trip so I won't be real active in this thread for a bit, but I'll make sure to check back on Thursday when I get back home. Any tips on working with the concrete myself and opinions on the bags versus truck question are welcome.

This is probably just the first of a series of backyard advice threads I'll be starting the next few months...