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Both natural clay brick and concrete pavers create a beautiful, durable surface.
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Best Lawn Care Service for Service Dogsĭeciding between brick and concrete pavers for your walkway, patio, or driveway project involves weighing several factors.Lighted Magnifying Glass That Stays Put.If your location isn’t flat and grading work must be done, consider the possibilities of combining Pavers and walls to complement each other. Pavers can also be used to correspond with color-matching retaining walls, steps, fireplaces and more. For ideas on color, texture, pattern, visit our Hardscape Project Gallery . Patterns can be made with pavers as well. You can choose from varying textures to create a certain feel – from a smooth, modern design or an aged, textured feel. Many pavers have several color options, and various pavers can be used together to create contrast or complementing borders and color schemes. Pavers offer an almost endless avenue of artistic opportunity. Concrete can be stamped with a pattern or finished with several different texture options. Many contractors offer a warranty on their work for two to five years or longer.Ĭoncrete offers a range of color variations created by dyeing the wet (not yet poured) concrete a particular color, which is done on the day of the installation. Most pavers come with a warranty on the quality of the pavers. When properly installed, no cracks or gaps should appear. If a single paver is chipped or marred, it can be removed and replaced with little difficulty. Pavers cost more to install but are less costly to repair or alter. But any cracks, chips, or problems that occur after installation will incur additional cost for the homeowner. The contractor might repair any issues related to the original construction. Repairs often require cutting a patch out or demolishing the entire pad and re-pouring it. If a crack develops, or a corner is chipped, it is usually costly to fix. Once the concrete slab is poured, it is permanent. There are some risks to be considered with this installation. Poured concrete requires less base work and preparation and is less labor intensive than pavers. Initially, a poured concrete slab will be cheaper to install than a paver area of the same size. In both cases, this movement is usually minimal unfortunately, if the concrete flexes more than 0.125 inches, it will crack. In this way, pavers can move with the freeze, and will settle back into place without leaving any bumps or cracks. However, each joint between two pavers allows for a bit of flex and movement. Freeze and thaw cycles will move pavers too. You can think of pavers as many small concrete slabs locked together. However, over time, concrete will still tend to crack and heave, which cannot be repaired. Contractors avoid this problem by putting “safety cracks” in the concrete. This movement is what causes the uneven bumps to appear along the joints in a sidewalk and cracks to appear in the previously smooth patio.
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Since concrete is a single “free-floating” slab, either the entire piece of concrete will move up or down, or it will crack. In four-season climates like ours in Pennsylvania, both materials are subject to moving ground caused by the freeze and thaw of the soil below them, and they behave in different ways. All correctly installed residential paver walkways and patios require this minimum, while driveways and industrial jobs require much more. Our recommendation is to have at least a 6-inch crushed stone base and a 1-inch layer of bedding sand. Instead, their strength comes from the interlocking pavers around them, and the weight distribution that it provides. Pavers don’t have wire or rebar grid in them. There are also clay bricks and natural stone products, but for simplicity, we’ll focus on concrete paving stones. Most paving stones-or pavers, as we call them-are made from a pre-cured concrete. Most public sidewalks and curbs, garage floors, and residential concrete projects are done this way. Stamped concrete often falls into this category, although there are some other differences between stamped and regular concrete.Ĭoncrete is usually poured either directly on the prepared site ground, or ideally, on a bedding layer of at least 2 inches of clean stone.
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This concrete is usually reinforced with wire or rebar and can be smooth finished or textured. When we speak of concrete, we’re generally talking about a single (monolithic, to be technical), poured concrete slab. To understand how these products differ, we first must clarify what we’re talking about, and how the products are similar. It’s important to understand that both concrete and pavers have a place, and what’s best for one area may not fit another. It’s a question that’s been raised time and again by professionals, do-it-yourself enthusiasts, and homeowners looking to make a wise investment decision.