Paver Repair & Re-Sanding in Rochester Hills

Many Rochester Hills homes sit above or below the street on rolling, wooded lots, so a paver walk or patio here is often built on a grade. Water running along the joint lines strips sand as it goes. Where it slows and soaks in at the bottom, the bedding layer can stay saturated, and saturated bedding can pump out through the joints under traffic. Stains on the pavers there are a sign the bedding is wet underneath. A downspout emptying onto the surface concentrates the same damage in one spot.

Runoff leaves the surface at the downhill edge. The Concrete Masonry & Hardscapes Association (CMHA), the paver industry's technical group, treats edge restraints as essential: when one loosens, joints within a foot or two of the edge widen and the outer pavers tip or settle. It accepts restraints built for the job, such as plastic or aluminum paver edging and precast concrete, with any spikes driven into the base, never the soil. Landscape bed edging and soil backfill do not qualify, timber is not recommended because it warps and rots, and no restraint belongs on top of the bedding sand.

Slope also decides the joint material. CMHA calls polymeric sand generally optional but recommends it on grades steeper than 7 percent, and wherever downspouts, eaves or heavy runoff concentrate water. Its makers call for a clean joint at least an inch and a half deep, so the old sand comes out first. Christian Hills still carries the deed restrictions of its 1955 plat, and associations are common in the 1980s to 2000s subdivisions, so it helps that a reset relays the same pavers in the same pattern.