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If you’ve got pavers on your driveway, patio, or walkway, you’re already ahead of the game. Pavers are one of the most durable surfaces you can install-but they do need a little attention to stay looking and performing their best year after year.
A paver sealer does two important things: it protects the surface from oil stains, water absorption, and UV fading, and it helps lock the joint sand in place. You don’t need to seal every year-every two to three years is enough for most residential applications. Before sealing, clean the surface thoroughly and let it dry completely-at least 24 hours. Sealing wet pavers traps moisture and can cause hazing. Use a sealer rated for your specific paver type-tumbled pavers, smooth pavers, and natural stone each have different requirements.
A paver that has dropped below the surrounding surface is both a drainage problem and a trip hazard. The good news is that individual pavers can be lifted and reset without disturbing the rest of the surface-it’s one of the biggest advantages over poured concrete. If you notice a low spot, address it before water starts pooling there. Standing water accelerates settling and can compromise the base layer underneath over multiple freeze-thaw cycles.
Rock salt and calcium chloride can damage paver surfaces over time and accelerate the deterioration of polymeric joint sand. Use sand or a paver-safe ice melt product instead for traction on slippery surfaces in winter. If you use a snowblower, set the blade slightly above the paver surface to avoid catching edges and flipping stones. A rubber cutting edge on your snowblower is worth the investment if you have a large paver surface.
The crown is the concrete cap at the very top of the chimney. It’s designed to seal off the top of the chimney structure and shed water away from the flue. Cracks in the crown let water pour directly into the chimney from above-the worst possible entry point for moisture. Most chimney crowns fail because they’re built too thin-often just a half inch of standard masonry mortar with no polymer modification. That material has no flexibility and cracks within a few seasons. A properly repaired or rebuilt crown, made with high-psi polymer-modified cement, should last many years.
Spalling is when the face of a brick breaks away-you’ll see chunks, flakes, or pits on the brick surface. It happens when moisture inside the brick repeatedly freezes and forces the surface to pop off. A few spalled bricks might look like a minor cosmetic issue, but they expose the interior of the brick to accelerated moisture absorption. Once spalling starts, it progresses faster than most people expect. Each winter adds more damage to the now-exposed brick interior. Addressing it early-either through brick replacement or veneer refacing-stops the cycle.
If you’re seeing stains on the ceiling or wall near your fireplace, smelling a musty odor when the fireplace is closed, or noticing water in the firebox after heavy rain — water is getting into the chimney. The source could be a cracked crown, failed flashing, deteriorated mortar joints, or spalled brick. The staining inside is usually the last sign to appear, not the first. By the time you see it, the exterior masonry damage has typically been developing for one or more seasons. A proper inspection identifies where the breach is and what repair is needed.
If you’ve ever seen a retaining wall that bulges outward, leans, or has started to collapse, there’s a very good chance drainage was the problem-not the wall material and not even the installation quality. Water pressure is the leading cause of retaining wall failure in New Jersey, and it’s entirely preventable when drainage is designed into the wall from the start.
When soil behind a retaining wall becomes saturated from rain or irrigation, it becomes significantly heavier than dry soil. That added weight pushes outward against the wall face. Without a drainage system to relieve that pressure, the force builds every time it rains-and eventually exceeds what the wall was built to resist. This is why you’ll sometimes see a retaining wall fail after a particularly wet season, even if it looked fine for several years before. The wall was being stressed progressively, and the wet season pushed it past the tipping point.
A properly built retaining wall includes a perforated drain pipe installed at the base of the backfill zone, surrounded by clean crushed gravel. As water moves down through the saturated soil, it reaches the gravel layer, drains quickly to the pipe, and is carried away from the wall-releasing the hydrostatic pressure before it can build. This pipe is not a nice-to-have. It’s a structural component of the wall system. A wall built without it is working against water pressure every time it rains.
Clay and dense native soils hold water. Gravel doesn’t. Using clean crushed gravel as the backfill directly behind the wall allows water to move quickly down to the drain pipe rather than saturating and expanding against the wall face. This detail alone makes a significant difference in how a wall performs over time — particularly in New Jersey where clay-heavy soils are common in many areas. Even well-engineered walls can underperform if backfilled with the wrong material.
