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Unilock Driveway & Pavers: The West Palm Beach Owner’s Guide
If you have a Unilock paver driveway or patio in West Palm Beach and a section is sinking, cracking, or shifting, we can match the pavers, repair the base, and reinstall the area. A typical Unilock paver repair in West Palm Beach runs $700 – $2,800 depending on square footage and how much base material has to be rebuilt. Most owners discover the problem after a rainstorm, when water pools in a low spot that wasn’t there last season, or when a paver edge starts to crumble near the driveway apron.
What we see most often in West Palm Beach is not the pavers themselves failing. It’s the sand and base underneath giving way after years of heavy afternoon downpours and shifting sandy soil. The paver is usually fine. What’s underneath it is not.
Which Unilock Models This Applies To
We work with the full Unilock paver line most common in South Florida residential driveways and patios: Brussels Block, Courtstone, Hollandstone, Richcliff, and Beacon Hill Flagstone. Each has different joint widths and thicknesses. Brussels Block runs about 60mm thick, Richcliff sits at 50mm, and Hollandstone is typically 60mm or 80mm depending on whether it was spec’d for foot traffic or vehicle load. That thickness matters when we’re repairing a driveway section that has to carry a car, not just a patio chair.
The quickest way to identify what you have is the stamp on the underside of a loose paver. If you have one that’s already out of place, flip it over. The Unilock name and product line are marked there. If everything is still locked in place, the color and edge profile usually get us close, and Graham Stein can confirm on the first site visit. One compatibility catch we run into regularly: older Hollandstone installations from the early 2000s used a 60mm paver on driveways, and newer code-driven jobs in West Palm Beach often call for 80mm. You can’t swap one for the other without changing the base depth, and we won’t pretend otherwise. On the OEM versus aftermarket question, for Unilock specifically we recommend OEM pavers whenever possible. The color blends are batch-specific, and a generic lookalike paver will read as a patch for the life of the driveway. Aftermarket base materials like paver sand and gravel are a different story. Those we source locally from West Palm Beach suppliers because the material quality is identical and it keeps your cost down.
Styles & brands we work with
Signs Your Unilock Driveway & Pavers Is Failing
- Low spots that hold water after rain. This is the most common early sign in West Palm Beach, and it means the sand base has washed out or compacted unevenly underneath. Left alone, the pavers in that low area will start to rock and eventually crack under vehicle weight.
- Pavers that shift or wobble when you step on them. A stable paver should feel solid underfoot. Movement means the joint sand is gone and the bedding layer has eroded, which lets water get underneath and accelerate the problem.
- Crumbling edges along the driveway apron or pool deck border. Unilock edges fracture when the edge restraint has failed or when a tire regularly cuts the corner. Once the edge paver breaks, the rest of the field starts to drift outward.
- Ant mounds or weed growth pushing up between joints. The sand joints should be tight. When they open up, it’s a sign the interlock has weakened. In Florida, ants and weeds take advantage of that gap quickly and make the displacement worse.
- Visible gaps between pavers that used to be tight. Pavers don’t shrink. If you’re seeing daylight between units that used to sit flush, the base is shifting laterally, usually where a downspout dumps water or where a tree root is lifting the edge.
Replacement Cost & What’s Included
Paver installation in West Palm Beach typically runs $7,000 – $18,000 for a full driveway. A partial repair, which is usually what brings someone to this page, lands between $700 and $2,800 depending on how many square feet we’re resetting and how much of the base has to be excavated and rebuilt. Paver patio installation runs $3,500 – $11,000 for a new build, but that’s a different scope than the repair work we’re describing here.
Every repair quote includes the paver matching, removal of the affected area, base compaction with new gravel and sand, reinstallation of the pavers, and fresh joint sand. We give a written price before any work starts. That price includes the drop cloths along the walkway, the path protection from the driveway to the work area, and the photo of the cleaned-up site before our crew leaves. No change orders unless we find something genuinely unexpected under the surface, and if we do, we explain it before touching it.
See the difference
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After
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AfterDIY or Call Us?
An owner can absolutely pull a few loose pavers, check the base depth, and take photos. You can also hose down the area and watch where water pools to see if the slope has flattened out. What you shouldn’t do is attempt to recompact the base with a hand tamper and call it done. Paver bases in West Palm Beach have to be compacted in lifts with the right moisture content, or the repair fails within a season. The other half of the job that DIYers miss is the edge restraint. If the edge isn’t secured before you reset the field, the pavers will drift again and you’ll be back where you started in six months.
If you want us to look at it, call (728) 203-3270 and we’ll set up a site visit. No charge for the estimate, and you’ll get a written scope with the exact pavers we’ll use and why.
FAQs
Unilock pavers themselves typically last 40 to 50 years in West Palm Beach’s climate, but the sand and base underneath them usually need attention every 10 to 15 years. The pavers rarely break down; the base erodes from stormwater and shifting sandy soil. Call (728) 203-3270 if your pavers are new enough to save but the base is failing.
Yes, we do partial Unilock repairs in West Palm Beach all the time. We excavate only the affected area, rebuild the base in that section, and reinstall the matching pavers. The repair area will be visible for a while until the sand joints settle, but the structural fix is permanent when the base is done right.
Most Unilock paver repairs in West Palm Beach take one to three days depending on the square footage and how much of the base has to be rebuilt. We schedule around family rest hours where we can, keep quiet tools in the rotation during nap and school windows, and leave a photo of the clean-up before we go. Call (728) 203-3270 for a precise window on your specific job.
We carry common Unilock colors and profiles in our West Palm Beach inventory, and we order specific color batches when the job calls for a tighter match. The old pavers on your site have UV-aged into a slightly different tone than new product, so we often pull from the edges of your own driveway to blend the repaired center. We also stock parts and material for KraftMaid, Cambria, and Silestone projects, so the same crew can handle multiple scopes in one visit.
Call for a Free Estimate
If you have a Unilock driveway, walkway, or patio in West Palm Beach that’s not sitting right, call (728) 203-3270. You’ll get a written price before any work starts, a live person on the phone, and Graham Stein walking the site himself before the first paver comes up. Put it in writing, then do exactly that.
Written by Graham Stein, Owner, Elmstead Remodeling West Palm Beach at Elmstead Remodeling West Palm Beach, serving West Palm Beach and nearby areas.
