Front Walks And Patios On Milton Clay Heave Every Spring
Rubber surfacing bridges the cracks that Milton's clay opens up in a walkway each spring. The built-up town sits on a flat plain of reddish clay and silt, and clay holds water. When that water freezes it lifts the slab, and when it thaws the slab settles back a little off from where it started. A front walk in Timberlea or a patio in Boyne ends up with a step where there used to be a joint.
A crack that keeps widening gets repaired, and the worst edges get levelled. Then the rubber surfacing goes over the whole thing as one flexible sheet with no joints left to lift.
Steps And Porches Ice Over On Milton's Colder Nights
Rubber surfacing keeps a step from turning into a sheet of ice on a night that drops well below freezing after a daytime melt. Milton runs colder overnight than the lakeshore towns because there is no lake beside it to hold the day's warmth, and that swing between a noon thaw and a midnight freeze is the normal winter here. Bare concrete steps hold that meltwater in a skin and freeze it.
Rubber surfacing drains the water through, and the little that stays sits on a texture a boot can hold. Step noses get a wrapped, protected edge so the front of each tread stays down.
What We Do On A Milton Patio Rubber Surfacing Job
Rubber surfacing on a patio or walk starts with a pressure wash or grind to get down to clean, bare concrete or pavers, and any sealer from a stamped patio is ground off. Sunken pavers are lifted and re-bedded before the pour, since the rubber surfacing follows whatever is underneath it.
We prime, then hand-trowel EPDM granules and binder three-eighths of an inch thick, slightly more on the treads, carrying the same layer up the risers and over the treads so the steps and the patio read as one surface. A Milton patio is normally done inside two days and walked on the next morning.