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Rant: my brand new fire pit almost wrecked my whole paver patio because of one dumb mistake
I finished laying 320 sq ft of paver patio behind my garage two weekends ago, and I was so proud of how level it all sat. Then I set the new fire pit right in the middle and dumped in a bag of lava rock, not thinking twice about the heat. About 45 minutes into the first burn, I heard this soft pop and looked down to see a hairline crack running through 3 pavers right under the bowl. Turns out the base of that pit gets way hotter than I figured, and the pavers had no sand joint buffer to soak up the expansion. I yanked the fire pit off, pulled the cracked ones, and relaid them with a 3/4 inch layer of leveling sand plus a cheap $12 fire pit mat from the hardware store. Two fires later, zero new cracks, and I'm kicking myself for not doing that from day one. Has anyone else had heat crack their pavers, and did you switch to a different base or just add a mat like I did?
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spencer78228d ago
The "sand joint buffer" thing is real, I read somewhere that pavers expand when they heat up and the sand lets them move a little instead of fighting each other. Sounds like you figured that out the hard way. The mat was smart too, cheap fix beats relaying more pavers.
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