Avoid Brick Paver Repair :Landscape No No's

Interlocking Pavers and Brick Paving

Everyday I observe what I call Landscape No No's that will result in future Brick Paver Repairs. Most homeowners and landscapers do not consider the design and installation effects their landscaping can have on the performance of their brick patios, brick driveway, and brick walkway. Below is a simple short list Landscape No No's to consider when installing your landscaping around your brick pavers.

DESIGN:
Always design your landscaping around your hardscape (pavers, home,fences,walls, etc..). It is important to design your brick paving needs and function first, then optimize your softscape (trees,bushes,beds,etc..) to accent your hardscape and home. Too often, the hardscape is sacrificed for appearance and function for the sake of a small tree or bush.

TREES:
Long-term growth of trees plays a huge part in brick paver repair. The obvious culprits are roots! Small specimen trees like Japanese maples, dogwoods, or Alberta spruces have little effect, but large evergreens like Pines, Spruces, or Firs and most deciduous trees like Maples, Oaks, and Lindens will have large future roots. These roots will surface under your paver stones and result in obvious lifts. The only way to repair pavers under these conditions is to remove the roots where surfaced but this may affect the health of the tree.

SPRINKLERS:
This is one of the most overlooked reason for brick paver repairs. Water and moisture creates erosion, freeze - thawing, and base material settling. Sprinklers should never spray on or over paver walks, paver patios, and paver driveways. The obvious problem can be continued running water over and through the paving stones, therefore exposing the paver joints, base material, and edge restraints to erosion. If any of these three paver items are compromised, the effect will be repairs and excessive brick paver maintenance. It is important to make sure that any and all sprinkler heads are at least 6" away from the edge of the pavers. Also, use drip irrigation inside all planting beds bordered by interlocking pavers patios or walks.

GUTTERS & ROOF DRIP LINES:
The neglect of homeowners or landscapers to address the water coming off the home roof is a major contributor to patio stones settling or shifting. Again, water erosion of the joint sand, base material, and paver bricks edges will cause your brick pavers to under perform. Gutters need to be redirected or have buried pipe to carry water under or around the paving stones. If you have a drip line of water coming off your roof, siding, or deck, design the brick pavers outside this drip line. You can also install a drip edge strip on your roof, siding, or deck to divert water to another spot to drip or run off.

This is a quick list of pre-design landscape requirements to help insure that you get peak performance from your landscape pavers and landscape blocks. Whether you install brick pavers, stamped or poured concrete, or wooden deck, these same Landscape No No's will apply!

Brick Pavers Installation : Step 1 PLANNING

For over 25 years I have been assisting homeowners and contractors with design & installation of brick pavers and modular retaining walls. Whether you are installing a brick paver patio, walkway, driveway, planter, or steps, a good guided plan is needed to insure a successful paver installation that is not only aesthetically pleasing but economical.

The PLANNING stage for a interlocking brick paver or modular retaining wall installation will be your easiest step in terms of labor, but probably the most important step. A poor plan of designing, ordering, or installing your brick paver project can lead to alot of frustration and unneccessay redo or repair.

For simplicity we will discuss a game plan for planning out the installation of a paver patio. We will also assume we do not need any steps to transition down. Start by taking measurements of the area that you want to install your brick paver patio and transfer the dimensions of the brick patio area onto some graph paper (boxes). I like to use 1 box = 1 sq.ft. (or linear foot) if the dimensions will fit on one sheet. If not, try making 1 box = 4 sq.ft ( or 2 linear feet). If your paver patio will have a curved design, use the garden hose to layout on the grass the shape & size that you are looking for. If you already have patio furniture, grill, or chiminea, place them in the patio area you mapped out to make sure you have enough room to move around comfortably. Take several reference measurements and transfer the points onto the graph paper.

Now, your first important piece of information needs to be calculated ... SQUARE FEET! This number is easily calculated by WIDTH X LENGTH = SQUARE FEET. When calculating FACE FEET for retaining walls, replace the WIDTH with HEIGHT in the equation above. By transfering your design to the graph paper, you can easily count the boxes to determine the square feet of your pavers patio, especially in a curved design. This square foot number of your brick paver installation will be the crucial information used for ordering your brick pavers, base materials, and other paver products.

The next important piece of information that you will need to know is the ...LEVEL of the EXISTING GRADE! This the level of the land in the area that you will be installing your brick paver patio. This information is very important for ordering your base materials and also important for how deep you need to dig down to install your paver base. We use a surveyors level to perform our brick paver installations but most homeowners do not need to rent one to obtain this information. Get a spool of string, a few small stakes, and line level bubble. Install a stake at the house and tie the string at the level you want your patio pavers at the house. Install another stake at the farthest point out of your patio. Pull the string from the stake at the house and wrap around the new stake while using the line level bubble on the string. Pull the string tight and wrap around the outside stake so the bubble shows level. Mark this spot on the outside stake with a marker and remove the string if you like. In the brick paver industry we will use a rule of thumb for slope of 1 inch per 10ft length. This is just a reference and you can use any slope as long as it is a "positive pitch" away from the home. The more slope you have the better but remember you do not want to create a brick paver patio that is a ramp or your furniture is leaning. 1 inch per 10ft lengths is not that noticeable to the naked eye and seems to work quite well in drainage. For our example paver patio, we will say the outside stake (patio edge) is 20ft out from the house stake. So, we will make a second mark (another color) on the outside stake 2 inches (1" per 10ft) down from the mark that was level. This will represent the height of our patio out in the yard. This is an important reference point so we can see how high our paver patio will be out in the yard. You will be able to determine whether you can just landscape up to the brick pavers or whether you will need a retaining wall to retain the patio.

The last piece of important information will come from re installing the string line from the house stake and wrapping the string around the outside stake where the outside paver patio height was marked with the slope. Now you can measure down @9-10" from this string line to reach the bottom of your digging for installing the proper paver base materials. This will answer one of the most frequently asked questions from homeowners, "How far do I dig down?".

We will go into more detail about prepping for your paver patio in Step 2 but this PLANNING stage will set the "ground work" for a better brick paver patio installation. This is the stage to mentally obsess about the details before you begin to stress your muscles with labor intensive steps, so enjoy!

Brick Paver Sealing is for the Brick, NOT the sand in the joints!

After completing a brick paver sealing of a paver patio today, the customer said while handing me my check, "so I will not get any weeds, right?". It drives me crazy that customers are only concerned with the sand in the joints being sealed and not the patio stones. Sealing pavers is for the brick, NOT the sand!

Today's customer never commented on the enhanced color and appearance of the brick paver patio. They never asked any questions regarding the long term performance of the paving stones surface or protection from natural elements. They were never concerned about the cost or frequency of an approved brick paver sealer application. They were only concerned during my estimate and my completion of services about a 100% guarantee of NO WEEDS!

I usually have to slowly explain to potential clients that sealing of pavers is for the enhanced appearance and performance of the concrete paver. But as predictable, customers only hone in on the sand in the joints. They believe that the brick paver sealer is for sealing the joints, therefore making the sand permanently hard like mortar so weeds can not grow. It is true that the paver sealer will typically flow into the joints and temporarily harden the sand. But as the interlocking brick pavers expand or heave due to winter frost, these joints will absorb the pressure and loosen. Snow, ice, rain, and wind will eventually erode the sand and create opportunities for weed seeds to germinate.

I could have saved this customer 100's of dollars if the paver joints were their only concern. I could have simply used some brick paver polymeric sand in all the paver joints to harden for the season. Simple touch ups of paver joint sweeping each Spring will keep joints filled and hardened to deter any chance for a weed seed to establish. I always tell customers that the number one reason to seal brick pavers is for aestheitc values of the paving stones, NOT for the sand in the joints!