A client of ours called us up and had a sinking driveway. Where they were parking their care they noticed pavers sinking where the wheels were and especially at the garage floor where pavers had sunk. This was causing water to intrude into their basement with water sitting there and eventually working its way down to the foundation walls. They wanted us to lift up the pavers and regrade them to that top of garage floor so they did not have any more water problems in their basement.
This project is nearly 20 years old, so minor settlement is fairly typical for a driveway of this size. The main concern for the client was the water problem that they were experiencing, but it also made sense for them to address some of the settling where the cars were parked and where the walkway met the driveway to ensure there was no sitting water.
A lift and relay of a paver project can be difficult if you are not doing the entire project. This is because any imperfections in the pavers that you did not pick up will be very noticeable after relaying the existing pavers. So you can see in this project we went back further to be able to account for those imperfections in the papers that we were not going to lift and relay. This covered us for the more aggressively settled pavers from the cars being parked in their driveway.
What we do to complete a lift and relay project is lift and clean those pavers, set them off to the side usually in the same pattern that we picked them up in, scrape out the contaminated bedding layer and dispose of it, relay those pavers, and then sweep in new polymeric sand into the joints. The reason why we scrape out that 1 inch bedding layer is because it is usually contaminated with weeds and organic material especially with how old this driveway is. If we were to reuse that bedding layer we would likely have weeds growing through the joints sooner rather than later. It is an extra step in the process, but it ensures our client has a quality product at the end.
Lifting relays are great because they allow us to reuse the old pavers and save our clients lots of money. This is especially true in this scenario where the base is almost 20 years old and has only shown sizes of minimal settling. However, our clients need to be happy with the look of the pavers in this case these are about 20 years old so they are starting to show signs of where on the surface showing those exposed aggregates in the pavers. With the aesthetic of these pavers being more traditional and the surrounding environment we actually like the look of these aged pavers as did our client. This is also the benefit of pavers as opposed to poured concrete. Pavers can be lifted and relayed whereas if concrete settles it is going to crack and needs to be replaced entirely. Or at the very least a section of the concrete needs to be replaced, but with new concrete versus existing concrete there is going to be a noticeable difference between the mixtures.
Another complication with lifting and relaying pavers is that it is not always going to lay the same way that they came up so you can see in the video we did experience a problem at the garage floor that we had to adjust some of our laid pavers in order to get our border pavers into place. There are other workarounds that we can do such as cutting a little bit off of the pavers to be able to fit that border paver in. Or with lift and relay projects sometimes there are not enough good pavers that have not broken or showing signs of degrading to be able to relay the existing project. What we will do in those cases is we will purchase some new pavers and lay a new border. We then have those old pavers that were in the border to be able to lay in the lift and relay area. That way our client has a newer looking project with that contrast new pavers on the borders and their existing pavers throughout the entire project. This is a way that we can help save our clients money in the process.
When a client asks us about lifting and relaying their project we always break down the costs of each of their options. This allows them to make an informed decision on how they want to spend their money and what they want their project to look like at the end. So what we do is we tell them what it would cost to lift and relay their pavers. We then let them know what it would cost to lift and dispose of the existing pavers and install new ones on the existing base. But with this option we cannot extend our warranty because we did not prepare the base. And if major settling is an issue over a small period of time we definitely do not recommend this option. We then provide a final option which would be a complete redo of the existing project with new pavers and a new base. This is how we provide value to our clients to make an informed decision on their purchasing experience.