Interlock in Orleans: patios, walkways, steps and retaining walls.

We do interlock repair as well as new installation, across Ottawa including Orleans, Gloucester, Findlay Creek and Vanier. Repair is genuinely a different job from installation and it is worth asking a contractor whether they actually do it, because lifting and relaying an existing patio without leaving a visible patch takes more care than laying a fresh one. Where the existing stone is sound, we lift it, correct the base underneath, and relay the same pavers so the repair does not read as a patch. Where the stone itself has failed or the pattern is no longer made, we tell you that before you are committed to anything.

It depends almost entirely on what is under the surface, which is why we look before we quote. A patio where one section has settled over a soft spot is a contained job: lift that area, correct the base, relay the same stone. A surface where the base was never built properly is a different job wearing the same clothes, and quoting it as the first one is how a price ends up moving after you have signed. We do not publish a repair price list. We come out, look at the base, and give you one price against a scope you have seen and understood.

Properly, it means going back to the base. The pavers come up and are set aside, the failed base is excavated and rebuilt in compacted lifts, the bedding sand is screeded level, the stone goes back down, and the joints are locked with polymeric sand. The part people skip is the excavation, because it is the invisible, unglamorous half of the job, and skipping it is exactly why a surface that was "redone" three years ago is dipping again. If the original stone is sound, redoing an interlock surface usually does not mean buying new stone. It means rebuilding what sits underneath it.

We are not going to give you a number of years, because the honest answer is that it depends on the base, the drainage, the load the surface carries and how much winter salt reaches it, and a single figure would hide all four. The more useful way to think about it: concrete and asphalt age by cracking, and once a crack opens it tends to keep moving until the surface is broken out and replaced. Interlock ages by settling, and settling is correctable. That is a very different story across the life of a surface, and it is the main reason we build in stone.