Saw a neighbor having, to me, caulk filled into the driveway expansion joints. What is this? Why would you do it (instead of leaving wood) and could you do it yourself? Looks like it was a 2 man operation of some local...workers.

~egon

I did it when I needed to lay a wire under the expansion gap. The caulk I used should still expand, so I wasn't overly concerned with it. Maybe he thought he'd be blocking the weeds from growing there, or maybe he had another reason. Did you ask him?

I'm considering doing it (putting some elastic type material in the expansion joints) because the original wood has long since rotted and gone away and I'm tired of ants/weeds and other assorted crap getting in there.

Doubt it was caulk.

Probably something like Deck-O-Seal or some other polysulfide based joint sealant (can get it at Home Depot, for example).

It's commonly used for expansion joints around pools where you've got coping, concrete, etc.

But have also seen it used for sidewalks, driveways, etc. Had our rear deck around our pool re-done with it when we moved in last fall, going to buy the materials and do our driveway and sidewalks myself.

You can get it in tan or the grayish concrete color. It's self-leveling during application also. Water tight seal and weed barrier.

2K

Backer rod and self-leveling sealant. Quikrete makes a product that is available and blue and orange. Backer rod is used like the poster above said, to keep from having to fill the entire gap with the expensive sealant.

Looks better (IMO) and lasts a lot longer than wood strips that harbor ant piles and weeds.

Just an FYI, always buy the quart tubes, as the smaller ones are a rip off (just compare the price per oz between the 2).

I've used many tubes of these 2, around our pool coping and expansion joints almost 3 years ago. The SL1 stuff has held up FAR better than the Sikaflex. A few of my sidewalk joints have opened up a bit so it's starting to come up in places.

http://www.bestmaterials.com/detail.aspx?ID=11161

http://www.homedepot.com/p/Sikaflex-29-fl-oz-Grey-Self-Leveling-Sealant-106711/202523824#.UYv_yEqDnTo


I bought both from here, pretty good prices.

https://plus.google.com/106089682657642893923/about?gl=us&hl=en

This is what I see specified on most projects. Don't recall having to make repairs on any installations in the past.

http://www.wrmeadows.com/pourthane-ns-non-sag-joint-sealant/

Cool. Thanks for the replies. I didn't ask because they were roping off their driveway and sidewalk when i walked by.

2000, I see you're in Dallas. Who did you have redo your pool deck and what did you have done to it, if you don't mind? I'm looking into the same thing. Doesn't look like it'll be cheap unfortunately.

I ended up going with Tile Rite:

http://www.tile-riteinc.com/

We had a quarter of the pool deck where the coping had separated from the pool edge due to tree roots.

Also, all the expansion joints around the pool were old, rotted, wood, going back to to the original builder's pad that was originally on the back of the house (pool had been added after move in).

So they tore out the coping, hauled away the old rotted stuff, and did the Deck-O-Seal.

He wasn't the cheapest quote, but I felt better about him than some of the others that came out to give me estimates (he also helped diagnose a couple of other equipment related problems I inherited on move in, so I thought it was worth it for that help on top of the work he and his crew did).

I was new to home ownership when we moved in, so I had no idea you could do the sealant stuff your own (well, I had an idea, but there was too many other things on the inspection report to deal with that I knew I could tackle on my own, and knew I couldn't deal with the coping situation, so it worked out).

Having watched them do the work, now I know what it takes, which is why I plan to do the driveway and sidewalk expansion joints on my own.

But he did great work, gave me good guidance, and his solution to the buckled coping actually saved me around $1500 over what I had been quoted. Most people had suggested jacking it up, doing some filling and leveling underneath, and then sealing the cracks.

He was the only one to suggest jackhammering out the old stuff and doing some new landscaping in that area, which is the way we went.

Honest, stand up, knowledgeable guy.

2K

Thanks for the info. I'll look them up. So did you just have the deck resealed or resurfaced with something like stamped concrete?

Out deck is an old cantilever style with cracks all the way around it. We're likely gonna get it cut back and have new coping stones put in.

I work in commercial construction, we use Sonneborn SL-1 (Self Leveling) for all of our sidewalk and paving expansion joints. For vertical expansion joints we use NP-1 (non-priming). A little pricey, but it's great stuff. We also use subcontractors from time to time that do nothing but caulking, they pretty much all use NP-1 and SL-1 also.