Free written scope consultation - allowances, timeline, and change-order rules on paper before a single trade is scheduled
Unilock Home Additions & ADU: The West Palm Beach Owner’s Guide
Adding square footage with Unilock stone or paver materials in West Palm Beach typically runs $45,000 – $130,000 for a full home addition, and $90,000 – $220,000 for a detached ADU. We work with Unilock-compatible building surfaces and hardscape integration on additions and ADUs throughout West Palm Beach, and we give you a written price before any work starts. Most families call us after noticing the original paver or stone work around an addition has started to settle, heave, or pull away from the foundation, or when a previous contractor left the outdoor transitions unfinished and water now pools where it should not.
Unilock makes pavers, retaining wall blocks, and outdoor hardscape materials that often wrap around home additions and ADUs in West Palm Beach. The failure is rarely the pavers themselves. It’s the base beneath them, the drainage around the new structure, or a seam where old work meets new work and nobody planned for South Florida’s wet season. Graham Stein has walked enough West Palm Beach job sites to know what sits under a shifting paver line: unwashed base, too little depth, or a downspout that discharges straight into the paver bed.
Which Unilock Models This Applies To
Unilock does not make a single “addition” product. What matters is the specific hardscape line and paver profile tied to your West Palm Beach addition or ADU. The compatibility questions we answer every week:
- Wall lines: Unilock’s Estate Wall, Pisa, and Brussels Dimensional systems each have different lip depths and setback requirements. A replacement block from a different line will not seat correctly, and the wall will drift within a season.
- Paver profiles: Umbriano, Richcliff, Thornbury, and Beacon Hill each carry different face dimensions and joint tolerances. Mixing profiles across one walkway or patio around a West Palm Beach ADU leaves visible seams and uneven sand joints.
- Era markers: Unilock changed manufacturing processes over the years. Pavers poured before roughly 2012 often have slightly different color-fastness and surface texture than current runs from the same named line. A single replaced paver may look brighter than its neighbors no matter how well it is matched.
The fastest way to identify what you have is to flip one loose unit and check the channel or rib pattern on the underside, then compare that to the current Unilock spec sheet for that line. But for additions and ADUs specifically, the material match matters less than the base and drainage under it. We tell West Palm Beach homeowners the honest sequence: identify the visible product, then check what sits below it. That is where the real repair usually lives.
Styles & brands we work with
Signs Your Unilock Home Additions & ADU Is Failing
- Paver lines pulling away from the foundation wall. South Florida’s wet-dry cycles expand and contract the base material. If the gap wider than a quarter inch opens between your home addition slab and the first paver course, the base has started migrating. Fix it before rainy season turns the gap into a channel.
- Water pooling against the new addition after a normal afternoon storm. ADUs and additions change how water moves across a West Palm Beach lot. A downspout now pointed at the pavers, or a slab edge with no drip line, erodes the sand joints within months. You will see sunken joints first, then wobbling pavers.
- Retaining wall blocks tilting at the top course. Unilock walls around raised ADU foundations hold back real weight. When the top course starts leaning, the backfill behind it is saturated or the geogrid was never installed. The lower courses do not fail first, the top one tells on the wall.
- Efflorescence or white mineral streaking across the paver face. This is water moving through the unit, not just surface staining. It means the base retains moisture longer than it should, and in West Palm Beach’s humidity, that moisture stays active for months at a time.
- Settled walkway that now slopes toward the house instead of away. An addition changes the original lot grading. If the original path now guides stormwater toward your door, the fix is a reset with compacted base and corrected slope, not just re-leveling a few pavers.
See the difference
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After
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AfterReplacement Cost & What’s Included
For West Palm Beach additions and ADUs, hardscape repair and replacement tied to the structure lands in the $45,000 – $130,000 range for the addition itself, and $90,000 – $220,000 for full ADU construction. When the work is limited to the Unilock portion (base reset, drainage correction, paver or wall replacement around an existing addition), a focused job in West Palm Beach often falls between $7,000 and $18,000 depending on square footage, excavation depth, and how much of the original material is salvageable.
What drives the range:
- Salvage rate: Unilock pavers with intact edges can often be cleaned and re-laid. Cracked, spalled, or heavily effloresced units get replaced.
- Base depth: a patio wrap needs 6 – 8 inches of compacted base for West Palm Beach’s sandy subsoil. A driveway-adjacent apron needs more.
- Drainage corrections: adding a channel drain, re-grading a swale, or redirecting a downspout is often the difference between a repair that lasts and one that fails again in two wet seasons.
Every estimate includes the written scope: labor, materials by brand and line, haul-away if needed, and a firm start and end window. The 365-Day Done Right Promise applies to the whole job. If the pavers shift or the wall tilts within a year, we come back and make it right.
DIY or Call Us?
There are things you can safely check before calling anyone. Walk the paver perimeter after a rain and mark where water stands. Look for joints that have gone soft or hollow. Check whether a downspout now points at a corner of the addition. Those observations save time and help you ask the right questions when you do call.
What you should not do is lift a large section of pavers and re-lay them yourself around an addition in West Palm Beach unless you understand base compaction and lot grading. A poorly compacted base fails within one wet season, and correcting a bad DIY job costs more than doing it correctly the first time. The same applies to retaining wall blocks holding back raised foundations: the weight behind them does not forgive a shortcut. If you want a written price first, call (728) 203-3270 and we will walk the site, name the product and the problem, and put the number in writing before anything moves.
FAQs
A properly installed Unilock paver installation in West Palm Beach can last 25 – 30 years, but the base underneath typically needs attention every 10 – 15 years because South Florida’s wet-dry cycles and sandy soil shift more than the pavers themselves. What fails first is usually drainage, not the paver units. Call (728) 203-3270 and we will tell you what we are actually seeing under the surface.
Yes, in most West Palm Beach cases we can lift the affected area, correct the base and grade, and re-lay the original Unilock pavers if they are still intact. The repair zone is usually larger than the visible problem because the failing base extends beyond the sunken spot. A written line-item quote tells you exactly how much gets lifted before any tool touches the ground.
A focused paver base reset and re-lay around a single side of a West Palm Beach addition typically takes 3 – 5 working days, including excavation, compaction, drainage correction, and re-laying the Unilock units. Larger wraps, retaining wall rebuilds, or full ADU perimeter work can run longer, and the written scope includes a firm window before we start. Call (728) 203-3270 for a schedule that fits your family’s routine.
We pull Unilock-compatible materials from local West Palm Beach supply yards and confirm availability and lead time in writing before the job is scheduled. For matching existing runs, especially pre-2012 color lots, we may order a small sample first to compare against your current pavers in daylight. We will not substitute a mismatched profile and call it close enough.
If you are researching Unilock work around a West Palm Beach home addition or ADU, we will walk the property, name what we see, and put the number in writing before anything starts. Put it in writing, then do exactly that. Call (728) 203-3270 for a free estimate.
Written by Graham Stein, Owner, Elmstead Remodeling West Palm Beach at Elmstead Remodeling West Palm Beach, serving West Palm Beach and nearby areas.
