Hi, I’m Mark with the Perfect Paver Company here again with this week’s question of the week and this week, I’m gonna answer, what is polymer and why do your pavers need it?

So in between interlocking pavers is a joint and during installation that joint gets installed with sand. A product that came out on the market, and in about the last five to seven years is called polymeric sand. What that is, is a mixture of natural sand and polymers or plastic. They mix those together in the manufacturing process and when it’s installed in the joint and you activate it with water, it activates the polymers, the polymers bind to the sand and when it dries it cures into a hard grout like material.

So the purpose of installing the polymeric sand in the joint is to help keep the pavers locked together, but it also helps keep the joint filled with the material that stays locked in the place. Before polymeric sand, you would install just natural loose sand in the joint and over time as rain and frequent cleanings would happen, that loose sand would get washed out, causing a void and that void would fill up with organic material, dirt, and other unwanted things.

So polymeric sand goes in the joint during installation or during restoration when you’re cleaning the pavers up. It locks itself into place and makes it so that it can’t fill up with organic material like dirt and debris, and one of the benefits of it is because your pavers are now easier to maintain because the joints filled with locked sand, it’s more difficult for things like weeds and vegetation to grow on the joint because it doesn’t have that organic material in the joints. So that’s polymeric sand in a nutshell. I hope that answers your question and by the way if you guys would comment below with the question that you might have about pavers, I’ll be happy to answer that in an upcoming segment of frequently asked questions. Thanks and have a great day!