When it’s time to put in a patio to beautify your outdoor living space and add new functionality and opportunities to your yard, you may be tempted by the wide variety of styles offered by stamped concrete contractors. While this technique has been around since the 1950s, it has recently gained ground in the outdoor surfaces market and has grown in popularity. However, many homeowners who have invested in stamped concrete for their patio find themselves less than satisfied a few months or years down the line when compared to homeowners who invested in brick or stone pavers for their project. Champion Brick, your brick and pavers experts in Milwaukee, New Berlin, and Southeastern Wisconsin, are happy to provide you with some information that shows that real pavers are always a superior product for your outdoor space.
One of stamped concrete’s advantages is its ease of installation. It is far less labor-intensive to install a stamped concrete surface than one made of pavers, because each paver needs to be hauled and set. Installing stamped concrete is a matter of mixing, pouring and stamping. With the ease of installation, however, comes a large room for error. Concrete is a mixture of water and cement powder, and If the mixture contains too much water, the cured concrete will have rough edges and a poor finish because the concrete adheres to the stamp too easily. Bulging and premature cracking is a problem with stamped concrete if the mixture is too dry.
When each brick or stone paver is laid with care and precision, you’re almost guaranteed a surface that will stay flat, even, and pristine for many years. Sure, a paver installation takes more time, but that extra time pays off a few years down the road when your pavers show their superior performance and durability over stamped concrete.
Although stamped concrete may be simple to clean and requires no maintenance to retain its patterned appearance, one of its major disadvantages is that it lacks durability compared to pavers. It is important to be careful where you install stamped concrete because it easily cracks and scratches under a heavy load. Stamped concrete is a poor choice for a driveway and any area on which cars are driven or parked. On a footpath, walkway or patio, stamped concrete is less likely to crack under pressure; however, it is still susceptible to cracking with weathering and time.
With cracking comes the need to repair. It is difficult to match color and surface consistency when patching a normal concrete slab, and stamped concrete makes matching color and consistency on the surface even more difficult. Although it is less expensive than other surface choices, stamped concrete may end up costing you more in the long run if you are bothered by unsightly cracks.
Pavers offer extreme durability, but also easy repairability. A cracked paver is quickly remedied by the replacement of one paver. In the rare event that a bulge occurs in a paver walkway, a repair is relatively simple. For these reasons and more, you can see that pavers are superior to stamped concrete. For the best pavers available for your project, visit Champion Brick today.
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Champion Brick is your Milwaukee, New Berlin, and Southeastern Wisconsin paver experts. If you have questions about any of our products or services please call us at 262-786-8260 or submit your message on our contact form to message us.