In today’s episode, we wanted to go over some different scenarios here that we have sealed and show you the benefits of what it looks like, once the stones are sealed versus not sealed. So we’ll start off here in the far left.
Concrete
You can see this is concrete. I just took an old cinder block made of concrete and it looks exactly the same. There’s no difference, you would never even know that this was sealed until we do the magical pouring water test on here. So when we pour water you can see the water just runs right off.
Let’s say we have a concrete driveway and you’ve got a leak, a transmission or an oil leak, it’s not going to allow that oil or transmission fluid to just soak right in versus right over here the not sealed – you can see it goes right into the concrete. Concrete is actually very porous, so once the stain sits in there it gets deep into the concrete, and that’s why it’s so difficult to remove.
We’ll do a little comparison right over here. So you can definitely see the difference with sealed concrete versus not sealed concrete.
Stone
The next comparison we’ll do is on some stones from our own backyard. We had our pavers installed about seven years ago and these stones have literally been sitting inside of my garage for the last seven years. So, just sitting in the garage and not even exposed to the sun, this is how the stones first came out to us, again, about seven years ago, and you can see, just from sitting in the garage, how they have faded without even being exposed to the weather.
What I did here is: I took these two stones, and this was actually much lighter than this stone, so I wanted to seal the lighter stone just to see how much color would come out of it. The darker the stone naturally already is the more color you’re going to be able to revive, but in this case, again, I took the lighter stone of the two and I put two coats of sealer, our enhancement sealer. And you can see right here: There’s definitely a huge difference. And this is just two light coats, not even really soaking the stone like we would do on the first coat when we spray. We usually get a flood coat on the stone. So this is just two light coats and you can see a major difference.
Sand
Now I went ahead and put some sand in here. We always recommend that we re-sand the joints. On the edge here, this is called your “chamfer edge”. Ideally, in between each stone you want about an eighth of an inch of sand to fill in that joint space. And what that does is it keeps the stones from shifting and from collapsing, and it also helps with our draining purposes.
Now, over time with our rain and weather or just regular pressure washing, the sand gets blown out of the joints. That’s why you experience another problem with weeds. So ideally use our sealer, it’s a two-part water-based sealer. And I just did this, not even two hours ago, so it hasn’t had a chance for the sand to lock into place, but I want to give you an example. If you have someone come out and they re-sand your joints, that’s great. But you want to make sure that whatever sealer they’re using locks that sand into place, so it keeps everything functioning the way it’s supposed to do. Then it also keeps the weeds from being able to poke up as easily.
So this is high-quality sand, it’s silica sand, that’s been completely stripped of all the nutrients. It’s great quality sand that you’re supposed to be using in between the joint space. So if you have re-sanded the joints again, that’s fine, but over time you’re going to lose that sand.
Not even two hours later, this is a lot of sand in here in one spot but you can see it’s already really beginning to lock into place and it’s going to become hard as a rock over the next few hours. It’ll be rock-hard. So that will really help us keep the weed growth significantly reduced.
Again, just to give you a little example of the difference: This is a dark color because it’s still semi-wet from the sealer, but it hasn’t even been a couple of hours and it’s already starting to get rock-hard. And that’s very, very important.
Coping
And then, the last thing is a piece of our old coping here, just to show you an example. The top here is the sealed in the bottom here. So we get the same effect. So you can see when we pour water here it just rolls right off. And then this is the unsealed version and it’s just kind of staying on there, it’s going to absorb into it.
Coping is much denser than just regular stones or concrete, so that’s why it didn’t absorb quite as fast, but it’s still absorbing in there versus the sealed option which as you can see – just rolling right off. It just rolls right down into the unsealed portion.
So I just wanted to do a quick demo. This is our most popular version when it comes to sealing pavers. Most people like the wet enhanced look because they like to bring back that color. There are so many features to sealing pavers besides the colors. You can see just like the concrete, it just rolls right off, it’s not going to just absorb right in there. Just like the concrete, if this was a paver driveway and you have an oil or transmission leak it’s not going to absorb right into the stone versus the unsealed portion which you can see, it’s just going right immediately into the stone. That’s why it’s really, really difficult to get oil out when it gets deep into the stone. And again, this is the paver version, you can see how that just rolls right off.
So if you guys would like a free quote, by all means, please call or text us at 813-335-2869. Feel free to check out our website at premierprowashandseal.com. Or you can check out our Facebook page at facebook.com/premiereprowashandseal. We do a variety of things besides just paver sealing – also house washing, building wash, pool cages, fence washing – a variety of things – but paver sealing is 80% of our business and we’ll be happy to answer any questions or concerns you may have!