How NOT to Build with Pavers- Why They FAIL! *DIY your own successful paver project

[Music] there's no doubt that pavers make the absolute best roadbased material available. Period. Hands down. History has proven it. There's been roads built out of pavers and stones that have been around since 2500 BC. Now, you can't say the same thing for asphalt or concrete. But pavers are subject to three typical kinds of failure. Rotational failure, vertical failure, and horizontal failure. We're going to cover those so hopefully you can prevent them and build your own driveway that'll last maybe not 2500 years, but it'll last longer than you or me both. Past. You've seen me make a video talking about how about the base is the absolute most critical element to the overall success of your project. And this still holds true, but for pavers, it goes a little bit further than that. If you happen to have an asphalt or a concrete driveway, we're going to cover some of the similarities and failures that you will notice from pavers to asphalt to concrete. We're going to do that right now. All right, guys. Today we're going to talk about how not to build the PA driveway and why they fail. Now, on this street, I've built two driveways. One of them is 10 years old. The other one is almost 20 years old. And we're going to look at those two driveways and we're also going to look at other driveways on this exact street and compare and contrast why some succeed and why some fail. This driveway is built 10 years ago. We resurfaced it last summer. And this driveway in comparison was built less than five years ago and is less than one block away. It's all about that base, guys. You can see that there's no problems with this the structural zone of this driveway at all. Here's the driveway that's just up the street from mine. You can see that the entire front of this drive, this driveway was actually built by the contractor that built all of the city streets. And the part of the problem is the base. It's what they use underneath it is inadequate. You can see the amount of heaving that he's got going on. 8 in heave right there. Contractor that built the streets failed. Now, let's go look up the road. The thing to know about the PA driveway and the concrete driveway I installed is the base was prepared the same. Everything you do under the driveway is as important as what you do on top of it. 15 maybe 20 years ago. Not a problem, not a chip, not a move in it. This is the same street. The base and how you prep it determines how well your driveway will hold up. All right, guys. You can see where the proper base installation is a key element to the long-term success of your project. Those driveways that we just got done looking at are proof. But now, let's talk about those three critical elements that lead to failure. horizontal, vertical, and rotational. What do each of those mean, and how can you keep it from happening at your own job? Let's go there. All right, guys. The first kind of failure you're going to typically see is called vertical failure. And that's where you get an individual paver like one of these, and the corner pops up. Well, you may be thinking, well, that's poor base. But nothing could be further from the truth. In actuality, it could be too much bedding sand. See what happens when you have too much bedding sand. Bedding sand doesn't have any cohesive material in it, which means it can flex and give under the exact right conditions, such as the stool of a chair. All you have to do is put too much pressure on one corner of that pa, the sand beneath it will shift because there's no cohesive material in it, making the other side of the pa pop up. Getting the right amount of bedding sand is critical to the long-term success of any project. And the right amount is 3/4 of an inch. Now, to achieve that result, you can use a 3/4 in plastic PVC pipe. Yes, you can actually use a plastic PVC pipe for this. Some of you guys are going to be screaming at me, no you can't. Yes, you can. Or you can use a galvanized or a steel pipe. Either one will work. But what happens is that outside dimension of the pipe equals about 1 in. And 1 in is the maximum depth of bedding sand that you want underneath any project. But the bedding sand is not the same as the base material or the subbase material. We need to cover that and we will in the other two types of typical failures that you'll see. So what are we waiting for? Let's go there now. All right, guys. I got to basswords this thing up because I forgot to mention that vertical failure can also be a reflection of poor subs soils or poor base material or a combination of those two things. And what I'm actually referring to is if you sometimes see a pavered project and it looks like it's got weird indentations where a car is driven or just sink holes in it, that's because the base wasn't installed the right way. Now, two things can happen. The subs soil or the raw dirt either wasn't properly prepared. Maybe they needed to do a soil correction on that material to get it to the ideal compaction or the base. That means the soil that they imported to separate the raw dirt from the bedding sand wasn't properly compacted. Either way, those things can cause that sinking and uneven wear that you sometimes see in a paper project. On a concrete or an asphalt project, this will be reflected as a lot of cracks, sinking, separating, and just generally ugly. Either way, you don't want it in pavers, asphalt, or concrete. So, getting that base right is the key to long-term success. All right, guys. I got to jump in here because I forgot to mention the minimum base depth for a driveway is 6 in, but 8 in or even 10 in is better. That's what she said. Now, let's get this thing back on track. [Music] Okay, guys. Well, hi Lucy. You want to be in the video? Okay, that's good. All right. Um, horizontal. Do you have anything else you want to add, Lucy? Can you just let me do my thing now? Horizontal failure in a PA system is kind of like the pavers falling out of bed, meaning that they slide off the edge. Edge restraint is a critical element to the overall and long-term success of a PA patio. Getting the proper edge is the difference between your pavers sloughing off or your pavers staying in place for 20, 30, 50, or even 100 years. Now, the edge restraint for a patio is different than the edge restraint that you would typically for landscaping. This is the edge restraint that you would see put around the border of a landscape project. You don't want that for a paver patio. This is the kind of edge restraint that you want for a paver patio. This is designed to allow you to drive steel spikes through it. This holds the paver in place. And the reason that I say steel very specifically is because you want to drive a spike through this to connect into the ground that will rust. You intentionally want it to rust because when that spike rusts, it acts like a weld. Welding this in place, making it an even permanent longerlasting bond. Now, there's some companies out there that tell you, "Oh, we are going to use concrete or asphalt for our edge restraints on your PA." There is nothing worse than concrete or asphalt because concrete inside the industry is actually called crackrete. That's a fact. And if you want to try to grow grass up to your patio and you use a concrete edge restraint, you have zero chance. Even if they bury it below the top of the paver, you're still only going to have a/4 to a half an inch of ground for that grass to grow on. And if the sun comes out, it'll cook that grass sure as all get out. With a plastic edge restraint, it's designed to allow you to put vegetation right up to the edge of your patio. Is designed specifically to lock that in place and to prevent horizontal paver failure. Why would you not choose this over something else? it only makes sense to use this product. All right, guys. Next, we're going to talk about rotational failure. And the rotational failure is usually a shifting from side to side of the pavers. They typically will just start to look a little bit disorganized like this. Maybe in the very beginning of the project, everything looked nice and orderly, but over the course of time, a few of the pavers started to shift and move and rotate out of the way. This is caused by a loss of the joint sand. That's the sand that fits neatly in between the spaces of the pavers. If that gets washed out, there's nothing preventing this paver from moving from side to side. Your best bet to prevent rotational failure is to do regular maintenance on your pavers, making sure that you maintain good joint sand in between here. If you don't like to do maintenance, which most people don't, then opt to use a polyme sand. A poly sand will last longer than just a typical joint sand, and it will prevent wash out, giving you better lasting, long-term results. All right, guys. Now, I know we covered a lot of information, but this is just the tip of the iceberg. We talked about horizontal, vertical, and rotational failures. And some of these failures are unique just to paper systems, but they're also universal principles that can show up in both asphalt and concrete failures. So you guys need to start to learn to be able to recognize when a failure is unique to pavers or if it's more universal to all forms of hard surfaces.