Why Sealing Works

A sealer does one basic thing. It closes up the surface so all that stuff can't get in.

Bare pavers are porous, like a hard sponge. They drink up water, oil, and whatever else lands on them, and once it soaks in, it stains and it feeds mold. Seal them and the pores close. Spills sit on top where you can rinse them off instead of sinking in for good.

Here's what a good seal does for a driveway:

• Blocks oil and rust from soaking into the brick
• Slows mold and algae from taking hold
• Holds the color instead of letting the sun bleach it out
• Locks the joint sand in place
• Makes the next cleaning quick instead of a fight

The Joint Sand Is the Whole Game

This is the part people miss. Pavers aren't really held down by their own weight. The sand packed between them is what keeps everything locked together.

Lose that sand and the trouble starts. Pavers shift under the cars. Edges come loose. Weeds push up through the gaps. Water runs down into the base and washes it out from underneath, and now you've got dips and low spots. A driveway that was flat starts going wavy.

Sealing locks the sand in. On a lot of jobs, the pavers get re-sanded first, usually with polymeric sand that hardens in the joints, and then the sealer sets the whole thing in place. That combination is what keeps a paver driveway tight for years instead of loosening up a season at a time.

Clean First, Always

You can't seal over grime. Well, you can, but you'd be sealing the dirt and mold right into the surface, and that's worse than doing nothing.

So the pavers get cleaned first. The mold comes out of the pores, the old haze gets stripped, and the surface comes back to the real brick color. Then it dries, gets re-sanded, and only then does the sealer go down. Skip the cleaning and you're just locking the problem in.

How Long It Lasts in Fort Myers

Depends on the sun and the traffic, mostly. A sealed paver driveway down here usually holds up a couple of years before it wants a refresh, sometimes longer on a shaded lot.

The sun is the big factor. Full-exposure driveways bake all year in Southwest Florida, so they fade and wear faster than ones that catch some shade. You'll know it's time again when the color starts flattening out and water stops beading on the surface.

Protecting Your Driveway in Fort Myers

If you've got a paver driveway and you want it tight and sharp for the long haul, sealing is what gets you there. At Under Pressure Cleaning & Sealing Services, we clean, re-sand, and seal paver driveways all over Southwest Florida. Give us a call and let us help yours last.