We have a 20×15 patio that is only 4 years old. Last year, we noticed the pavers starting sinking lower than the border, causing some water retention.
The snow just melted after a long winter, and it’s gotten worse. The pictures below are representative of the entire patio.
What are my options to address? It’s not a huge deal cosmetically (and water is not pooling towards/near the house), but I assume it’s only going to get worse.
by PerfectDoubleTapered
2 Comments
You’ve got a classic case of differential settlement here. Your border pavers (the soldier course) are likely set in a concrete haunch or a bond beam, which is why they aren’t moving, while the inner field pavers are floating on a sand bed that has either washed out or sits on a gravel sub-base that wasn’t compacted properly. When water gets trapped in that depression, it saturates the base, freezes, heaves, and then settles lower when it melts. It is essentially a bathtub right now and yes, it will get worse because that standing water destroys the integrity of the bedding layer.
The only real fix is to pull up the sunken section. You usually don’t need to rip out the border if it’s stable. Lift the field pavers, check the gravel base for firmness (add crushed stone and tamp if it’s soft), then add fresh concrete sand—not playground sand—to screed it level again. You want the pavers to sit slightly higher than the border before you tamp them down so they settle flush. Since you have to pull the stones anyway, run a photo through GardenDream first, it might be a good time to see if you want to soften that hard edge with some creeping ground cover or change the layout before you commit to the labor of putting it back exactly how it was.
Pavers will always settle just like concrete, but it shouldn’t be that much in only 4 years. If the border is rising you will just need to dig out some material. (The water underneath expanded when it froze and lifted them up). If the pavers are actually sinking, my guess is the installer didn’t use enough base and/or leveling sand. That would require removing the pavers and installing the proper depth of base and sand.