[Nek]

I would like to preface this by saying I do zero brickwork. Im into Land. Design and maintenance. At a higher end clients home, they are in the process of having a paver drive installed. For the edging, they laid rebar along the sides of the paver edges, and pounded rebar vertically to hold the horizontal rebar in place. I have never seen this done before. "Can" this be correct?? It is invisible once backfilled, and is less obtrusive than the black plastic, but like I have said, I have never seen this before and wondered if they are destined for failure.

Then again, for all I know, it moght be a common practice.

[scl]

The rebar will not stop sand migration or washing. Nice try on their part but proper edging does much more than just mechanically restrain the paver I'm not sure how it could be less obtrusive than proper restraints, but if you don't like the black edging, use aluminum! I for one have never seen rebar used this way. And to answer you're question it will fail.

[Stonehenge]

I've never heard of edge restraint done quite like this.

I can say that about a dozen years ago, the company I worked for used a concrete bead as an edge restraint, which worked moderately well for the first year or two, until the bead broke into smaller pieces and began separating from the pavers. To help combat this I began driving rebar into the ground around the pavers and troweling a bead into and over the rebar, to give it added strength.

I guess some of my inintial thoughts are about what would happen where one piece of horizontal rebar meets the next - are they connected somehow? Otherwise, I'd predict paver movement there.

And with the thickness and shape of rebar, it seems it would lend itself to moving around.

On the flip side, it's strong and durable, though left exposed to the elements it'll surely rust.

So my verdict is - I wouldn't put my name on it, but it's possible it'd hold for awhile.

[dan deutekom]

I too think it will eventually fail and I doubt that it is any cheaper than proper edging. I know of a large job that uses strips of 2" wide X 1/4" metal held by rebar. Dosn't work. Twice a year the metal and rebar have to be pounded back into the ground because it works it's way above the pavers.

[Stonehenge]

Speaking of that, when you drive spikes into your base, do you vary the angle of attack of each spike?

We do, and it seems to cut down on the chance for it to rise up over time.

[jwholden]

Nek,

Do you have any pictures of that drive?

I went by one the other day that looked like a homeowner job as well. There were some flaws that were glaringly obvious to me, but perhaps acceptable on a homeowner job.

The pallets of pavers were not mixed to distribute the paver colors. There were some very obvious lighter and darker parts of the drive. This will be a good test if it really makes a difference mixing the colors or if they will all bleach out in time.

The grade was humpdy dumpty as well and they ended up lower than the street with the bottom corner of the drive, even though the garage is above grade. I would like to have seen a more gradual grade change along the drive. However, this would have led to a need for more fill and topsoil along the sides and I'm sure the homeowner didn't want to go for that.

Final observation, the drive was patterned Unilock Classico. I've used the paver in the past but would have liked to have seen one of the many tumbled products. I looked at the drive more than the architecture of the house, and perhaps the unilock is acceptable to match the house.