Paver Patios and Paver Repair

Yes. The service area is all of Southern Idaho, between the Oregon and Wyoming borders, reaching as far north as McCall, Stanley, New Meadows and Salmon. I work from Nampa in the Treasure Valley and Blackfoot in eastern Idaho. New patios and repairs to existing ones both, residential and commercial. Start with a quote by clicking here.

The base under them, nearly always. A base that's too thin won't hold pavers in position, and about 2 inches is a depth I find regularly on patios I'm called out to fix. On a repair the gravel-only base comes out and a gravel and sand-cement base goes in, which holds the pavers a lot longer than gravel alone.

The other common culprit is drainage. Water running under a patio takes the fines out of the base and the surface follows it down, so a patio that only sinks in one corner is usually telling you where the water goes.

Frost, and water that had nowhere to go.

Water in the ground under a patio expands when it freezes and lifts whatever's sitting on it. In this climate that happens over and over through a winter instead of once. Come spring the ground relaxes and the pavers drop back down, but never quite where they started, and every winter moves them a little further.

Two things prevent it and both are under the surface. A base deep enough to sit below the worst of the movement, and drainage so the water isn't sitting there to freeze in the first place. That's why base depth isn't fussiness. A patio on two inches of base in Idaho is a patio that moves every single winter.

If yours heaves in one area and not the others, go look at what's above it. A downspout, a low spot in the yard, a sprinkler head. The water is arriving from somewhere, and finding it is usually the cheaper half of the fix.

Those are one problem, not two. The joints are empty.

Joint filler is what makes a paver surface behave like one surface. Once it washes out, the pavers can shift individually, water runs straight down between them and takes more filler with it, and anything blowing past has somewhere to germinate. The weeds aren't coming up through the patio. They're growing in the gap you can now see.

Plain sand is what usually washes out, especially anywhere water runs across the surface or a pressure washer has been used on it. Re-sanding with a sand and cement filler holds up a great deal better, because it sets up in the joint instead of sitting there loose.

The other half is the edge. Without a border holding the perimeter, the outside pavers walk outward, everything behind them loosens a little and the joints open up across the whole field. Weeds worst at the edges is that.

While the joints are open is also the moment to lift anything that's settled, so it all happens once.

Almost certainly not. That's efflorescence, and on new work it's normal.

Pavers have cement in them, and cement produces free salts as it cures. Moisture carries those salts to the surface and evaporates, and the salt stays behind as a white bloom. It has nothing to do with how the patio was laid.

Most of it weathers off on its own over the first year, and that's the cheapest way to deal with it. If you'd rather not wait, start with a brush and a small amount of water, small because water is what brings the salt to the surface in the first place. Past that there are cleaners made for efflorescence. Be aware that it doesn't always come off completely, particularly once it's been sitting a while.

The important part is not sealing over it. Seal it in and the haze is under the finish permanently.

So clean it or wait it out, let the pavers dry properly, then seal. On an older patio a bloom that keeps coming back is a different conversation, because there the salt is arriving with water from somewhere and it's worth finding out where.

They can usually be brought back. Pavers fade in sunlight when they were never sealed. Cleaning them, taking the vegetation out of the joints, re-sanding with a sand-cement filler and putting a wet look sealer on brings the color back out. A masonry border around the perimeter often goes in at the same time, to stop the edge pavers moving. Sealer is maintenance instead of a permanent fix, and four or five years is what to expect from it in this climate. On a driveway or anywhere else tires and boots are working on it, plan on less.

Usually, yes. The settled areas get lifted and reset on a proper base while the rest of the patio stays where it is. Then the whole surface is cleaned, re-sanded and sealed, so the repaired sections don't stand out.

One thing I'll be straight about. Fixing the settled section doesn't fix what caused it. If the base under the whole patio was built too thin, the rest is sitting on that same base and can settle later. A partial repair often holds for years and is usually the sensible call on cost, but it's worth going in knowing which of the two you're buying.

Full tear-out is for a patio failing everywhere, or one that's the wrong size or the wrong height to begin with.

Depends what it has to carry and what it's sitting on. The Interlocking Concrete Pavement Institute puts the minimum compacted base at 4 inches under a patio or walkway and 6 under a residential driveway, over well-drained soil. In a climate that freezes and thaws all winter, figure closer to 6 and 9, and more if the soil is soft, silty or wet.

Two inches is a depth I find regularly, and it's where sunken pavers come from.

It's also where two prices for the same patio quietly part company. The base is gravel, the trucking to bring it in, and the hours spent packing it down, and every bit of it is buried by the end of the first day. Put in half as much and the patio looks perfect the day it's finished, still looks fine the following summer, and starts to move the winter after that.

So ask each of them how deep the base is going in and how they're packing it down. Those two answers explain the difference in price better than either man will.

The pavers themselves will outlast most of the house. They're dense units, they don't rot, and a cracked one gets pulled and swapped in about twenty minutes without disturbing its neighbors. That's the real advantage of laying a surface in pieces, and it's why people choose it.

What has a service life is everything else. Joint filler needs topping up over the years. Sealer, if you use it, is on a cycle. And the base is what decides whether the patio is flat in twenty years or wavy in five.

That's why the money on day one goes below the surface. Nobody has ever regretted a base heavier than it needed to be, and the patios I get called out to tear up almost never failed because of the pavers.

No. Plenty of patios go their whole life unsealed and hold up fine. It's a choice about how you want it to look and how much you want to fight stains.

Sealed, the color stays where it started instead of going flat and gray in the sun, and oil, leaf tannin and barbecue accidents sit on the surface long enough to be cleaned up instead of soaking straight in. Unsealed, the patio slowly fades, and there's a fair argument that a weathered patio looks better for it. Some people genuinely prefer it.

What sealer isn't is structural. It doesn't hold pavers in place and it won't fix a base problem. Sealing a patio that's already moving is money spent on a nice finish over a problem that's still there.

If you do seal, treat it as maintenance on a cycle. Four or five years is what to expect in this climate, and less on anything you drive or walk on, because tires and boots take it off mechanically.

Only if the base was built for it. Where a patio sits somewhere a vehicle might reach, like beside a back door or along a side yard, the base wants driveway standard instead of patio standard. If there's any chance of a vehicle ending up on it, say so before the base goes in. Building it heavy the first time is far easier than rebuilding it afterward.

Yes. Accessible walkways in pavers are regular work, on commercial ground and at houses where somebody needs to get in and out without a fight.

The requirements come out of the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) Standards for Accessible Design, and the ones driving the build are running slope, cross slope, width, and how smooth and stable the surface has to stay. That last one is where pavers earn their place and also where they get people into trouble. A paver walkway laid flat on a proper base with tight joints handles it easily. A paver walkway on a thin base doesn't stay flat, and once it has settled into low spots and open joints it has stopped meeting anything, whatever it met the day it was finished.

So on accessible work the base is not the place to save money, and neither is the edge restraint. Those two are what keep the surface where it was set.

Tell me at the start if a route has to be compliant. It changes the grading before it changes anything else.