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Denver: 303-322-9009 Ft. Collins: 970-484-5557 Salt Lake: 801-410-4345 |
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Patios built with quality pavers offer many advantages over other types of surfaces. Available in a wide range of attractive styles and colors, a well-installed paver patio can add a delightful ambiance to outdoor living areas. (more…)
Upgrading your outdoor space with beautiful and durable patio pavers adds richness and value to your home. The material, color, and texture you choose for your exterior improvement can make a notable difference in the impression you wish to convey. Whether you decide between brick or stone hardscapes, tumbled or smooth, slate or flagstone, your choices should always compliment the style of your home or building. (more…)
Easy to install and durable, beautiful porcelain pavers from ProCoat Systems are available in a broad selection of styles and sizes. Create a clean and elegant look in your outdoor space with Belgard’s skid-resistant, easy-to-clean porcelain pavers. Perfect for high traffic areas, the pavers require no grout or adhesives and may be applied to just about any surface. (more…)
For dedicated do-it-yourselfers, creating a patio, walkway, driveway, or other outdoor area with interlocking pavers can be a rewarding task. Doing the job right the first time, however, is essential. (more…)
For decades, patio pavers in Denver were installed exclusively using variegated sand intended to “lock” into the joints of the installation. Whether called concrete or “torpedo” sand, this washed and screened sand was the gold standard of joint substrates for patio pavers in Denver. (more…)
One of the most trenchant criticisms of modern construction—a suffocating sameness—extends down to the choice of patio pavers in Denver. Often, even when there is some attempt by the developer to create differentiation in the houses of a development, the residents soon discover that the cookie cutter is still at work on their patios and walks. (more…)
Laying patio pavers in Denver’s backyards or along a walk is a straightforward affair that doesn’t require much technical sophistication in the way of substrate preparation. However, add supporting the weight of vehicles, such as in a driveway or an RV parking pad, and you have to build a substrate good against more than some frost heaving.
To avoid both heaving and subsidence, you have to start with meticulous foundation preparation. This means excavation, and lots of it. Where a walkway needs a compacted surface supporting about 4-6 inches of compressible gravel, a normal service driveway needs a gravel bed 6-12 inches deep and an RV pad requires at least 18 inches of gravel to deal with the static compression load it will face. Therefore, to have the requisite sand base for the pavers, you may have to excavate nearly two feet of soil to create the proper substrate, and more if your site is facing drainage or water management issues.
Not All Gravel Is Equal
The road beds supporting the asphalt you ride upon daily are not built using clean gravel. It’s a mixture of fine and coarse sand, small pebbles and rocks ranging up to ¾ inch in size. This mix is called 0-3/4 and it is used for the base in roads because this “dirty gravel” is highly compressible. The varied sand grain and pebble sizes allow a matrix to develop between the larger stones, all but permanently locking them into place once compressed.
Compact The Bed And Keep Compacting It
There is no shortcut around thorough compaction of the gravel bed. Trying to compact too thick of a layer of gravel will result in incomplete compaction, so take it slow and compact only a newly spread layer of gravel you know that your machine can thoroughly pound into place.
Remember before laying in the inch or two of screening sand and compacting that, to put in a fabric barrier that will limit the travel of the sand layer into the gravel layer below. If you don’t keep the sand adequately trapped from migrating under load, you will find parts of your paving stone installation eventually sinking under load.
Use A Boundary
A retaining guard around the patio pavers is one last must have detail. You can build the best substrate to stop any part of the installation from sinking, but without a guard, you risk the installation spreading laterally under load, paver by paver. Make sure your bed is wider than your installation to prevent the perimeter stones from tipping out and then place a guard around it.
Come and see the line up of patio pavers in Denver ProCoat Systems stocks, and feel free to ask us technical questions you have about your projects.
At ProCoat Systems of Denver, make no mistake, we love concrete. We sell all kinds of waterproofing solutions to color it and protect it. But when it comes to sidewalks, driveways, and patio spaces, we love patio pavers in Denver much more.
Versatility
We admit that poured concrete slabs have come a long ways from their humble gray origins. Now with color additives and embossed patterns, poured concrete can look like it’s not trying to be that. However, there is one facet of concrete that was and will ever be: it will crack. Patio pavers, such as ProCoat Systems of Denver carries, has poured concrete beat in every category when it comes to visual appeal and longevity. 
Patio pavers come in more diverse colors and shapes, can be mixed and matched for color and texture, and they can also perform two tricks that a concrete slab cannot—they can mitigate cracking, and they can be water permeable.
After Care is Easier
Especially in our weather extremes here in the Denver area, concrete integrity is an all or nothing proposition. If the slightest crack develops in a slab or poured concrete, that is the beginning of the end. Left alone, that crack will propagate with every freeze/thaw cycle. If water gets below the slab, freezing will cause that slab to begin to separate at the crack.
If the crack is detected early, it can, of course, be patched. The problem is that the repair is anything but invisible. The same can be said for stains, especially on tinted concrete. With patio pavers you have options. By leaving a small surplus of pavers behind with the end user, they have actual repair pieces at their disposal. In the worst case, if an installed patio paver fails, or becomes stained, its replacement can be at hand for installation into the patio, driveway, or walk. If one or more of the pavers has become stained, your end user can try different cleaning solutions and techniques on the spares to figure out the best way to clean the pavers without damage.
See For Yourself
Come and see the full line up of stylish patio pavers Denver’s ProCoat Systems carries, from the basic to the elaborate.
Come summer, many Denver homeowners will look at that slab of concrete in their backyard and wish they had one with patio pavers such as the ones we carry. The cost of demolishing and disposing of that slab has killed many dreams of an alternate hardscape for lots of homeowners. Fortunately, with our expertise in both waterproofing and patio pavers, you can come to the rescue. It is entirely viable to repair and waterproof the existing concrete slab and then turn it into the base of a new look using an overlay of patio pavers.
The uniformity of manufacturing tolerances that Belgard is famous for makes their patio pavers perfectly suitable for a mortar based overlayment of existing concrete.
Before proposing this project to an inquiring home or commercial building owner, you have to make certain that the existing concrete surface to be covered has a grade capable of doorway clearance or diverting water from where it is unwanted to avoid troublesome accumulation.
If you aren’t totally familiar with professional-grade waterproofing materials and techniques, first be sure that the existing surface is free of foreign substances that may prevent proper paver adhesion. Dirt, oils, paints, or old sealant will have to be thoroughly removed as prep work to the application.
As an overlayment is a permanent installation, pre planning the course of the patio pavers is critical prior to setting them into mortar. As later corrections are difficult, it also pays to lay out a grid to ensure the well guided placement of patio pavers.
Since mortar is susceptible to disruption by our vicious freeze/thaw cycles, it is critical that the mortar is flexible enough to deal with these conditions and still adhere to the substrate. For an extra measure of weather protection, when cured, the whole project should be water sealed to prevent moisture penetration, and frost heaving during cold weather.
As always, if you need any product specific or technical assistance on a project such as this, be sure to contact us. We are always eager to help because our mission is to help contractors and homeowners succeed in their building projects.
For more information regarding Belgard’s line of patio pavers contact ProCoat Systems in Denver, or Fort Collins.
Belgard Hardscapes’ exciting porcelain patio pavers are coming to Denver, exclusively through ProCoat Systems. This line is called Mirage, and it’s an imported product from Italy, one that represents the culmination of an idea many years in the making.
Belgard Hardscapes scoured the world to find a manufacturing partner who could bring all of the advantages of naturally cut stone patio pavers, but with the modularity and ease of installation you have come to expect from the rest of the Belgard product line. After years of development, these patio pavers are going to be in Denver. (more…)
