The greenscape aspect of your landscape is enjoying a well deserved winter dormancy. But your hardscape isn’t. Walkways, decks, patios, retaining walls and other hardscape items are all out there in the elements year round. The constant pelting with ice, snow and road salt can take a toll on concrete, landscape pavers, stone, wood and other hardscape material. Hardscape repairs can be made on the nice, warm days that we should start getting soon.
Some of the repairs you’ll have to deal with include filling cracks and potholes in asphalt driveways, Concrete driveways, walkways, pool decks, and even some patios, can experience cracking and chipping. Landscape pavers can sink or heave, break, or shift. Wood deck surfaces can become rough and the protective coating can be worn off.
You can do all of these repairs easily. Home centers sell asphalt and concrete patch that can be poured into cracks and holes and then troweled to a nice, smooth finish. To repair chipping and cracking, concrete patching material can be spread as a surface coat. Extensive repairs, such as leveling an entire patio and repairing a retaining wall, are best left to a professional mason or driveway contractor.
If landscape pavers are broken, they have to be replaced. If they sink or heave, the stone dust or sand base has to be adjusted. Base material has to be either added or removed to make it level and then the pavers can be replaced and new stone dust or sand swept between the affected pavers and those surrounding them. If the whole patio is wavy, you’ll have to pull up all the pavers, level the base and replace the pavers. It can be a daunting job if you’ve never done it before. But our hardscape professionals can do what’s necessary to make your patio look like new. They can also handle concrete repair of small areas like sidewalks and pool decks.
Repairing wood decks usually involves sanding down rough spots and re-applying the protective coating. Our hardscape professionals can also do this for you.
If you check your hardscape now, you can begin preparing to do the job, whether it’s DIY or done professionally, and that concern can be behind you. Then, when the soil dries and it’s warm enough, you can begin your planting and landscape maintenance.
Keeping Our World Green 
When landscape pavers started to become trendy, many clients removed perfectly good driveways and walkways to replace them with pavers. What was even sillier is that they used the broken concrete to build walls of ‘recycled’ concrete because they were trendy too. They did this even if they had no use for walls. They would ‘make’ a use for the walls. I still do not understand why they went through so much effort. Even if they had use for walls, they could have kept the driveway, and build the walls out of block.
My patio is the original patio that was installed in about 1957. the wooden expansion joints decayed years ago, so were filled with epoxied pebbles. I do not want to replace such good quality pavement that lasted so long!
Paving is a craft that requires studies and training. I for one loves to help my customers with their asphalt or concrete paving. But beforehand, I see first that I will understand the needs of my client when it comes to paving.
Ron
Asphalt
Sometimes it’s totally worth the repair. Other times not so much. Thanks for providing us with more insight about repairing hardscape, it can completely transform an area.