You may have had an old patio with older paving stones or red brick or know of a friend or family member that had one. You notice there was always a lot of weeds or vegetation growing in between the joints and it was a lot of work to remove them and it made the patio look ugly. This made you feel some type of way about having a patio especially when they say it’s maintenance free. Well they came out with technology over the years that will help prevent the weeds on your patio and make it maintenance free. It’s called polymeric sand.
The Paving stone industry back in the late 2000’s
When we first started in patio installation in 2009 the paving stone industry was still new and the technology was not fully developed. After we finished installing all the pavers and concreted the edges we use to sweep fine sand into the joints. The sand would just sit in between the gap in the paving stone and over time wash out. Over time when there was little sand left, dirt and weed seeds would start to find their way into the joints and start to root in the sand. What is left to do is to powerwash every year, spray with weed killer or weed whack it every week and if one year you neglect the maintenance your patio will be so overgrown that you’ll stop enjoying it. This will leave a bad taste in your mouth about your patio but now you will not have to worry about the weeds taking over your patio.
New technology for the Patio Industry
Now that patios are going in everyday all over the nation technology has developed to prevent weed and maintenance with paver patios. We use a company called Alliance and they developed polymeric sand which is a sand and dust material of a mixture of sand and binders. When installing this product it comes in a bag that we open after the patio is all done and dry. We want to make sure the patio isn’t wet or damp because that would activate the polymerics. When the bag is empty we will start to sweep into all paver joints in different directions. Some paver will not be able to take as much poly sand because of the joint size but we try to get it into every space. After we fill all the joints we blow the patio down with a gas powered blower to remove leftover sand. This will help prevent sand from sticking to the surface of a paver. When the surface is clean of sand you will start to hose down the patio this will activate the sand when the water mixes with the binding agent it will start to set.
We wet the entire surface to ensure the polymeric sand will be activated. This process takes around 15 to 20 minutes for the sand to start to cure. After the patio is fully hosed down we take a few minutes to blow down the patio to make sure no leftover sand is on the surface. Within 24 hours the joints will start to harder and lock the paver into each other. Polysand is very similar to grout for tile but for outdoor uses. This is an overview about polymeric sand. We also have a link by the manufacturer (link).
Every year the paver industry gets better and better with more people picking paver for their patios. The pavers have come a long way as well with face mix which makes the paver hold their colors longer. We hope this article gives you a little more insight on poly sand and how you don’t have to worry about the weeds and maintenance on your new patio.