Paver Sealing & Sanding
Naples Lakes Country Club

Naples Lakes Country Club sits in East Naples off Davis Boulevard, close to I-75, behind a gate at 4784 Inverness Club Drive. Its Arnold Palmer course opened in 2000, and roughly 731 residences share it, each with a golf membership built in. Six neighborhoods, among them Lake Placid, Lake Tahoe Village and Lake Arrowhead, wind between lakes and nature preserves.

Pavers from the early 2000s have usually faded and lost joint sand. Low joints let pavers shift, especially at drive edges and around pool decks.

The housing mix decides the job. Condominiums, coach homes, carriage homes and golf villas share entries and walks, while the single-family estates have their own drives and pool decks. A ground-floor condo on Winged Foot Court that looks across to the community pool needs a very different quote from an estate on Cerromar Drive.

Where homes irrigate with lake or reclaimed water, as some recent listings show, unsealed pavers commonly pick up brown or orange arcs along sprinkler lines.

That Cerromar Drive estate, built in 2002, shows the larger end: an oversized screened lanai, a new cage and a new saltwater pool with spa. A deck like that is re-sanded and finished with a slip-resistant sealer, and the cage can be washed the same day so dirty water does not run onto freshly sealed pavers.

We remove that staining first, restore the joints with polymeric sand, then seal. The sealer closes the surface so the next round of overspray, leaves or tire marks cleans off easily.

Sanding follows the manufacturer’s sequence. Alliance Gator calls for a completely dry surface, then sweeping, a pass with a plate compactor and a second sweep and vibration, leaving the sand about 3 mm below the top edge of each paver. Joints that have failed are cleared to at least 1 1/2 inches deep, and we never bulk them up with plain sand under a polymeric top.

Driveways need a vehicle-rated sand; Alliance Gator names Gator Maxx G2 for drives and rules out Gator Nitro and Gator Dust for car traffic. Activation is a gentle shower spray, section by section, keeping the surface wet until each section is done. G2 sands need just that one watering and shrug off rain in about 15 minutes on a draining base, though the maker’s general advice is a full day without rain.

Where a lanai or walk has pavers laid over an existing concrete slab, Alliance Gator treats it as an overlay and wants 24 hours dry after activation, so those areas are booked only when the forecast is clear.

If a white film shows up on new joints, Alliance Gator links it to humid weather or pavers that were still damp at installation, and removes it with an efflorescence cleaner or hot-water pressure washing. We clear it before sealing so it is not locked in.

Sealer choice depends on the look the owner wants. Water-based acrylic joint-stabilizing sealers, such as SEK’s SB-1300 and SB-7700, coat the surface and help bind the joint sand, and they discourage weeds and ants. SEK’s SB-4000 is a penetrating, breathable silane-siloxane that repels water and leaves the natural color.

A wet-look film gives the richest color but has trade-offs on a pool deck. Techniseal cautions that a second coat on dense, low-porosity pavers can become slippery, and that any film-forming coating carries a small risk of trapping efflorescence beneath it. On decks around the saltwater pools here, a single slip-resistant coat or a penetrating sealer is often the safer call.

Many homes back onto one of the community’s lakes. When a patio or deck slopes toward the water, rinse water is steered into the lawn rather than straight down the bank, and leftover sealer is never washed toward the lake edge.

Waiting times are set by the label. SB-6000 needs 24 hours after cleaning, sanding or rain, application between 40 and 95°F on a surface under 120°F, and two coats; it reaches full cure in seven days. Techniseal’s WA wants 30 days after polymeric sand and sprinklers switched off for 24 hours, which on irrigated lots here means arranging the timer in advance.

Rather than promise a number of years, we recoat when the finish wears. Techniseal advises at least two years between coats and notes that heat and heavy traffic shorten a sealer’s life, so an often-used drive will need attention sooner than a side walk.

Coach and carriage home buildings can be done together so each entry ends up the same color, with the association or individual owners booking as their documents allow. Re-sanding starts at $199 for up to 400 square feet, cleaning and re-sanding at $349 and a clean, sand and seal up to 400 square feet at $399. A standard drive at $599 and a slip-resistant pool deck at $499.