Why Polymeric Sand Fails | 5 Reasons and How to Prevent Them

what's happening hardscapers today we're going to talk about the five reasons why polymeric sand fails let's get into this with my business model initially I was doing a lot of paver maintenance lift and relay work when I first started my business that means if there was a problem with pavers clients would reach out to us we would come out assess and fix this means that we did a lot of polymeric sand failure projects where we would pressure wash all of the polymeric sand out and reinstall on another date when it is dry out this can be a really time consuming and costly process especially since we're doing typically two trips out to that job site one to pressure wash clean up the area and another day when it is actually dry out we would go back and re-poly the project so we want to eliminate that and do as much as possible to ensure that our polymeric sand is going to actually cure properly and last for a long time so here are five ways that we can prevent these mistakes from happening and that is number one the base material I talk about this a lot on this channel and that is the base material being extremely crucial to the longevity of your project and that's no different than with polymeric sand if in your base material you are not using a three-quarter inch clear open grade aggregate a quarter inch clear open aggregate for the bedding layer or a three-quarter inch down to fines a gravel for your base material with a quarter inch bedding layer or a concrete sand bedding layer and if you're deciding to use stone dust that doesn't allow water to drain freely through it you will see failure in your polymeric sand that stone dust will allow water to remain underneath your pavers and when polymeric sand is activated it needs to cure from the bottom up that water underneath your pavers will prevent that polymeric sand from curing and that will lead to the failure of that polymeric sand so the base material is incredibly important to the longevity of your project as well as the longevity of that polymeric sand the next one is the joint sizes this means widths and depths there are different polymeric Sands for different widths that means the joint width for example if you're installing a tight joint with there's a different polymeric sand for that as opposed to a four inch joint width with something like flagstone if that's the width of your joints typically when we're installing Flags when we're trying to get that width down to a minimum but still whatever joint width you have you should be looking for the polymeric sand associated with that joint width so take a look at the material you're installing see the joint width and make sure that your polymeric sand that you're choosing is applicable to that joint width and that brings us to Joint depth most polymeric sand manufacturers have a minimum of one inch or one and a half inch joint depth that you need to install their polymeric sand and that's incredibly crucial and you should never actually be installing something of before you sweep in the polymeric sand some people may try to cut corners and install some sort of sand that's inexpensive first and then top it up with some polymeric sand that polymeric sand will absolutely fail if this is the case you need that minimum joint width recommended by the manufacturer it doesn't make sense to install something before the polymeric sand and this brings us to number three and that's installation that means the sweeping blowing consolidation and activation of that polymeric sand every manufacturer is going to have their own instructions so always lean on the manufacturer's instructions as opposed to this but for the most part you're going to be pouring that sand out sweeping it and when you're doing that you want to pour that bag of sand over a wider area and sweeping no more than 10 feet in any direction if you don't follow this you could be separating the ingredients of that sand over a wider area as opposed to keeping them together then we're going to actually consolidate that sand and what that looks like is strapping on some sort of protective layer to your compactor or using a roller compactor or placing something over your pavers to prevent them from chipping and cracking and running a compactor over those pavers to ensure that that sand gets down to the bottom of the joint and you're seating the pavers into the bedding layer you'll notice that the sand goes down quite a bit in Failure to actually consolidate will leave air pockets which will lead to erosion in that sand and lead to failure consolidation is a crucial step in the polymeric sand installation process and should never be overlooked and this may need to be repeated time and time again when you sweep in consolidate sweep in consolidate to ensure that that polymeric sand is reaching to an eighth of an inch below the top of the paver or below the bottom of the chamfer you do not want to install a polymeric sand all the way to the top of the paver The Next Step would be blowing that polymeric sand and you want to make sure you get off all the dust and residue so that doesn't Harden to the surface of the pavers and then finally the activation watering is a crucial step and you should follow the manufacturer's instructions for this because every sand is going to be different so I'm not even going to talk about the activation but this is a main point of failure when it comes to this process so follow the manufacturer's instructions and you should be good to go unless Point number four is weather make sure you're installing on a sunny warm day the surface is dry as well as the joints are dry and it should remain this way for however long the manufacturer recommends that could be 24 48 Hours of no rain because rain will lead to failure once that sand is activated no other rain or no other water should be introduced to that for the given period of time that the manufacturer recommends so that sand has a chance to fully cure and Harden over that time period and then finally number five would be environment and that comes down to seeing the area around you it could be a shaded backyard you may need to apply a greater slope onto the patio especially if it's a textured Stone to get that water out of there so it doesn't stand when there's no sun hitting the patio because standing water will cause growth of organic materials on the surface and in the joints of those pavers but it would also lead to that sand not curing over a period of time and slowly eroding away so taking a look at the environment around you deciding what slope you're going to apply on that patio is a crucial step in the process to ensure you're not having standing water on your project over that period of time after a rainfall and these are the five reasons why polymeric Sands fail polymeric sand is an excellent product I use it on most of my installations when we're not opting for a semi-permeable resin jointing compound however there are a lot of ways that installing polymeric sand can go wrong and we want to eliminate those as much as possible so follow the instructions of the manufacturer make sure you're not applying one manufacturer's installation methods to another because they will definitely differ the installation of polymeric sand can be a costly one if you do not do it properly if you do not follow the manufacturer's instructions there's nothing worse than having to go back to the project to pressure wash all the sand out lose that material lose your time and have to reinstall it it's especially if it's a problem in the planning process which that won't actually solve in the long term if you use stone dust underneath your pavers if there's no slope on the top of your pavers or other weather related problems as well it's not something that you can just hand off to one of your laborers without any training and let them go at it it's definitely something that needs a little bit of training and requires some attention to detail to be able to get done properly if you're a diyer definitely seek a device definitely look to the manufacturer for their installation guidelines and follow them appropriately and hey if you want to learn more about polymeric sand installation we have a members only platform with courses on interlocking concrete pavement installation which includes more content on installing polymeric sand and other jointing compounds so be sure to check that out link is in the description below if you have any other reasons why polymeric Sands fail leave it in the comment section below I'll respond to anybody and everybody like this video if you found it helpful for whatever reason and subscribe to this YouTube channel for more hardscaping cont 10 like this thank you so much for watching

Channel: I Am a Hardscaper

Views: 16,456

Keywords: hardscape, hardscapes, hardscaping, hardscaper, hardscapers, installation, paver, pavers, paving stones, paving stone, contractor, contractors

Id: 4YOxa523D0w

Length: 8min 20sec (500 seconds)

Published: Tue Feb 14 2023