Permanent Products: Concrete and Paver Patios
Video Transcript
The two most popular permanent products that have been around have been concrete pavers and poured concrete in terms of creating that perfect patio experience where it's nice and level you can have chairs you can have hammocks you have your barbecue on it have all the kids toys on it have all your toys for smokers and cook stations and all that kind of stuff so what we really like about these two products is that they are very good bang for your buck in terms of creating a universal space that you can do anything you want on there.
What differentiates them from say decking materials and composites is that these products are able to have wood burning fire tables on it or wood-burning fireplaces, because again, they're concrete so the embers from there are not gonna hurt it, the fire all that kind of stuff they, you know, by-law allows us to have wood-burning things on concrete floor systems right, so, that's where we really do a lot of this stuff a lot of the interlock paper patios a lot of poured concrete patios.
In the most recent years we're really pushing more for the interlock paver patios because of course they're repairable. So with a permanent product a couple of keywords that we're really looking for in these permanent products are: no maintenance, bordering to low maintenance, right and of course repairability so if something were to go wrong over a period or the lifespan of the installation we could easily repair it.
So that's where it kind of separates poured concrete can be very very good bang for your buck interlock pavers a little bit more but you know in eight to ten years if installed correctly there'll be some areas that could have shifted and heaved and maybe not right but it's easily repaired for a couple hundred bucks to come in and level a few areas maybe a tree root came in and popped up a couple of pavers on the edge, whereas with poured concrete as soon as that comes in and it cracks it there's no way to repair it where it's really going to last or look as good ever again, so you know we really like that interlock paper because of the permanency and because we can add so much color to it ,you know, with the different papers you could pick a a charcoal border with a light gray interior, so all of a sudden we can get a little bit more design you know love with it right and so we really like the pavers because you could put the kids sand tables on it, the water tables you can put hammocks on it, bouncy castles, temporary pools, trampolines, go down the list everything you can do outside you can put on these concrete based paving stones and you're not really gonna hurt them.
A lot of people have a memory of the old-school interlock pavers that 1) were pink and in very i'm sure it was trending then but awkward shapes different weird triangles and octagons and things like that but what they really have a memory of is weeds and bugs coming up in between all the joints in it.
A lot of people have a memory of the old-school interlock pavers that 1) were pink and in very i'm sure it was trending then but awkward shapes different weird triangles and octagons and things like that but what they really have a memory of is weeds and bugs coming up in between all the joints in it. Well what's developed over the past 15 years is a product called polymeric joint sand that has just gotten better better and better so think of it like an outdoor grout just like an indoor grout except this one allows for a little bit of flexibility with the shifting and heaving of the seasons and all that so now the entire surface of the interlock paver patio acts as one solid surface as opposed to having brick sand in between it which would allow water to percolate through so most of the polymeric joints ends are between you know 96 and 98 percent not permeable so they only allow a little bit of water to go through and that's because some of the fancy pavers might have undulations and water would get trapped in between the nice textures of them, right, so we still have to allow a little bit of that water to go through but again it's acting as one solid surface so where water used to get through them before all over the whole patio that would cause shifting and heating underneath all the water is going away where we want to go and that's where we're not getting that massive shifting and heaving people we're used to seeing and of course it goes almost as hard as concrete so you'd actually have to chip it away in between all the lines and that's what's also stopping any bugs and weeds from growing up in between it like we kind of saw in that circa 20 to 40 years ago with some of those older patios, so of course now everything has gotten better, the design of the pavers, the colors, the textures, right, all that kind of stuff as well as now the joints have been solved in that this this is a phenomenal product that you can do everything you want in your yard on.
