Repairing Brick Paver Walkway

Repairing a brick paver walkway begins by first removing the affected brick pavers. Make sure to remove a large enough section that goes beyond the damaged walkway area. After removing the brick pavers, visit a landscaping store or home improvement center to find replacement brick pavers if necessary. Note that the pigment used in fabricating brick pavers can fade out over time, so finding a perfect match maybe difficult. By repairing a larger area of the brick paver walkway than is necessary, you can mix the old and new brick pavers to reduce the appearance of any repair lines.

Repair the brick paver walkway bed by adding clean sand to it as necessary. Tamp the sand down firmly to constitute a solid bed for reinstalling the brick pavers. A block of 2×4 or 4×4 often works well for tamping down and leveling the walkway bed. If you are repairing a large area of the brick paver walkway you may want to rent a soil compactor. After reconstituting the bed begin installing the brick pavers. Again, if you needed to purchase replacement brick pavers that are not identical in color to the original ones, be sure to intermix the new and old pavers.

When installing the brick pavers it’s best to install the hole ones first. Then follow up afterwards installing any required cut brick pavers. It makes the job go much faster.

Once the brick pavers have all been reinstalled, sweep into the paver joints polymeric sand to interlock the brick pavers together.

Polymeric sand has a special polymer binder in it that when activated with water that causes the sand to fuse together. This helps to prevent water erosion, ant, and weed damage that inevitably causes most of the failed brick paver walkways. After sweeping the polymeric sand into the joints, make sure to gently water down the repaired brick paver walkway to activate the polymeric sand. If your brick paver walkway has heaves in it you’ll need to again remove a larger area of the brick paver walkway than you may have originally thought. This way you can level out the high spots in the walkway bed. Again, a length of 2×4 can act as a screed board for leveling the walkway bed. After leveling the walkway bed make sure to tamp the sand down firmly prior to installing the paver bricks.