While having a brick patio in your backyard can look beautiful, you will need to properly maintain it in the long run in order to retain its beauty and effectiveness. After making a brick patio in your backyard by hiring patio builders, you will surely enjoy it’s looks for the first few years. However, if you do not provide your patio with proper maintenance, it will soon start looking like an old place with grass growing through the gaps.

Fortunately, it is possible to recover the former looks of your brick patio by providing it with proper maintenance. However, keep in mind that this process can take you a while to do.

Here are some of the best ways of maintaining a brick patio.

Power Washing

In order to improve the looks of your brick patio, you can power wash it to remove all the dust and grime. For this process, you must use a proper surface cleaner attachment. The surface cleaner will help distribute the water evenly on the patio surface, and will keep the water away from damaging the patio surface. This type of proper pressure washing can easily remove all the dust and sand accommodated on and between the bricks of your patio.

However, after the sand is removed from between the bricks, you should then use more sand to keep the patio together. When it comes to using the sand in your patio, you can either use regular sand, or polymeric sand. While polymeric sand is known to have more benefits, both of these sound types have their own pros and cons you must weigh before using them.

Regular Sand

If you use regular sand in your patio, you can save some money. But that is the only advantage of using regular sand, as it does not stop the weeds from growing in it. That is because regular sand never forms the hard surface like polymeric sand. Ants can also easily dig between the bricks when you are using regular sand in your patio.

Additionally, keep in mind that regular sand is easily washed away by rains and storm water. So, you will have to replace the regular sand every year or so in order to maintain your brick patio in the long run. Regular sand can also get attached to your shoes, and can make other parts of your house dirty rather quickly.

If you have a patio which looks great, you should never use regular sand if you want to retain the beauty of your patio in the long run. This is where polymeric sand comes in.

Polymeric Sand

You can make polymeric sand by mixing regular sand which is properly graded, and a polymer to bind the sand together when used between bricks and natural stone. Using polymeric sand to install and maintain your backyard patio in the long run is the best thing you can do to increase the life of your brick patio.

How To Apply?

So, if you plan on using polymeric sand to fill the gaps between the bricks of your patio, then first you should allow the patio to properly dry after washing it with the help of a pressure washer. You should choose a nice day on which the patio is completely dry after you have done all the pressure washing on it.

Once the patio is properly dry, you can then use polymeric sand to make the patio hard and beautiful once again. Never pressure wash your brick patio after applying polymeric sand, as it will waste the newly applied sand, and hence your money as well.

After the application of polymeric sand in your patio, you can spray the patio with water to help the sand in settling down between the bricks.

Once the polymeric sand is hard enough, it will automatically resist the growth of weeds in between the bricks of your patio. Additionally, it will also keep the ants away from burrowing under your patio by digging between the bricks.

Polymeric sand is considered one of the best treatments to weed growth between the bricks of your patio. It is made possible due to the hardness of the polymeric sand after it is properly seated between the bricks. You can also get patio contractors Long Island to maintain your patio.