A town full of 25-year-old backyards
Census numbers show just how new Fishers is: about 30 percent of homes were built in the 1990s and another 32 percent in the 2000s, and fewer than five percent predate 1980. The median home was built in 2002.
That timing matters for concrete. A patio or pool deck poured with a house in the late 1990s or early 2000s has now sat through two decades of Indiana freeze and thaw. That's usually when the builder's original patio starts to settle, the pool deck pulls away from the coping, and homeowners decide the 10-by-12 slab off the back door was never big enough anyway. Replacing it is the chance to go bigger, add a fire pit circle, or switch to a stamped pattern.
Pool decks around Geist and the rest of Fishers
Geist Reservoir, built on Fall Creek in 1943, covers about 1,900 acres, and much of it lies in Fishers. Around the lake neighborhoods and the subdivisions with backyard pools, many decks date to the same era as the houses. Indiana's pool code wants those decks slip-resistant, draining with no standing water, and sealed watertight at the coping. When a deck can't meet that anymore, our resurface-or-replace guide walks through the choice.
Fishers rules to plan around
- Driveways. Digging into any street, sidewalk or curb to build or repair a driveway needs a right-of-way permit from the city and a posted bond; the fee is $50 through the Engineering Department. The city's construction standards also ask that new drives line up with existing driveways unless the Director of Engineering approves otherwise.
- Backyard fires. Fishers is stricter than its neighbors. Recreational fires have to be at least 50 feet from any structure or the public right-of-way, in an enclosed, screened, noncombustible container, between 9 a.m. and 7 p.m., with an adult and a garden hose or ABC extinguisher on hand. On a typical subdivision lot, that 50-foot rule decides where a wood fire can go, or whether a gas fire feature is the better plan.
- Runoff. The city's stormwater standards encourage disconnecting driveways, walks and patios from the storm system so water soaks in instead of rushing to the street. That's worth thinking about when we set the slope on a new patio.
The ground
Fishers shares Hamilton County's glacial till soils: mostly Crosby, Brookston and Miami, which drain slowly and hold water through the winter and spring. A patio or driveway here needs a compacted stone base and a slope that moves water off and away, and footings for walls and steps go down to the 30-inch frost depth set in Indiana's code.
What we pour in Fishers
- Stamped patiosReplace and upsize the builder slab
- Pool deck replacementFor decks that have heaved or sunk
- Pool deck resurfacingNew color and grip on a sound deck
- Fire pitsPlaced with the 50-foot rule in mind
- DrivewaysRight-of-way permit and all
- Whole backyardsPatio, fire and walls in one job
Around Fishers
Fishers became a city on January 1, 2015, after a 2012 referendum. It's home to Conner Prairie, the living-history museum on land William Conner settled, the same Conner who helped lay out Noblesville. The Nickel Plate Trail keeps growing too: a 1.3-mile extension with a pedestrian bridge over 96th Street opened in February 2026.