Paver repair and releveling

The single greatest advantage pavers have over poured concrete is that they come apart. A slab that cracks is permanently cracked. A paver surface that settles can be lifted, the base underneath corrected, and the identical units put back down.

Done properly the repair is invisible, because the material going back has weathered for exactly as long as everything around it.

What repairs well

• Localised settlement. A low spot that ponds, a dip inside the field, one sunken corner. The most common call and the most satisfying fix.
• Perimeter spreading. Joints opening progressively toward an edge, which nearly always means the edge restraint failed or was never installed.
• Washed-out joints. Sand gone, weeds established. Cleaning and re-sanding with polymeric restores the interlock.
• Trip lippage. One unit sitting proud of its neighbors, usually over a root or a localised base void.
• Root heave. Repairable, but durably only if the root is dealt with — which sometimes means a conversation about the tree.

When repair is the wrong purchase

We will tell you to stop spending money when we find these, and we would rather say it at the estimate than after taking a deposit:

• Base built too thin from the start. If we lift a section and find three inches of aggregate over clay, releveling buys two or three years and then the same call comes back. The base is the problem and it runs under the whole surface.
• No geotextile with visible clay intrusion. Once clay has migrated into the aggregate, that aggregate is no longer a base and re-compacting will not restore it.
• Settlement over a buried void — a collapsed line, an old stump cavity, fill over a former excavation. The cause has to be addressed or the surface follows it down again.
• Widespread settlement across the whole field. Localised dips are a repair. A whole patio moving is a base failure.

What the work involves

We lift the affected pavers and set them aside in order, expose and assess the base, add and compact aggregate where it is deficient, re-screed the bedding layer to correct grade, re-lay the same units, reinstall or upgrade the edge restraint, and re-sand the joints with polymeric sand.

The grade correction matters as much as the level: a patio that ponds needs fall built back into it, not simply to be made flat again.

Joint sand is maintenance, not a repair

Polymeric sand is consumable. It degrades over roughly five to ten years depending on exposure, drainage and how much salt has been applied. Losing joint sand is not a failure of the installation, it is a maintenance interval arriving.

Re-sanding on schedule genuinely extends the life of the surface, because the joints are what transfer load between units. A patio with empty joints is a collection of loose pavers, and it will start moving.

Why we quote this at all

This is the least profitable work we do per hour and it competes directly with selling a new patio. We quote it because a customer whose $600 repair we did honestly is a customer who calls us for the $9,000 project three years later — and because recommending a rebuild when a repair would serve is the specific behavior that makes people distrust this trade.