Paver walkways and patios are often large investments for your outdoor living space. They transform the look and feel of your yard and create a space that you, your friends and your family enjoy for the spring, summer and fall months. These projects do, however, require maintenance and repair over time.
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We have a customer whose patio had started to grow unsightly weeds in the joints every year. This customer approached us to install new polymeric sand in the joints and to fix the edge restraint as well as fix the trip hazard at the top of the stairs.

Visible edge restraint and weeds growing through the cracks.
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On the left, the stair with the trip hazard. On the right, the patio is now leveled with the stair.
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Painting brick is all over HGTV lately. They show beautifully white washed brick or accent brick walls painted to enhance their character. If this is done right, it can actually be a really great way to accent your home. Unfortunately, if done wrong, it can compromise your structure.

There are different varieties of paint – latex, acrylic, oil-based, water-based, etc. Not every variety works for every application. In masonry, paints that lock in moisture eventually cause the masonry to retain water and break down. This causes the block, brick or mortar to become weak and your structure to become compromised. For this reason, we always recommend using masonry paint. These paints allow the masonry materials to breath and for moisture to be released (in gas form) from the masonry work.

For the job pictured, the homeowner painted his chimney with a typical outdoor paint. This paint is one that you would use for wood siding to protect it from water getting in. This caused moisture to build up from the condensation inside the chimney when the furnace would vent. In order to fix this, we ground off the paint (a 2-day process) and let the chimney dry out. Then we parged the chimney to give it a textured finish. If the customer wanted to paint it with masonry paint at this point, it would be safe. Parging gives the masonry an extra “skin” and helps to prevent further damage.
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This is a classic case of beauty vs. function. Having a professional walk you through the work can avoid compromising your home. This customer reached out before he needed his entire chimney replaced. Luckily, we were able to fix the chimney and still create the beautiful aesthetic he was looking for.

Being a part of the snow plow industry is a wild ride; it can be fun, stressful, exciting and dangerous all at once. Our most recent storm, Stella, came in with plenty of notice. The week prior, we had a forecast of 5-8 inches. Once we see a forecast of 2 or more inches, we begin to plan for the storm. Then we can fit the particulars (such as time, length of the storm, density of the snow) into our preseason prep work. Turned out for this storm, the people who expected to be able to handle the winter themselves, ended up needing help. In this post, I hope to detail why we do contracts and preseason work and how it affects our ability to fight the storm.

To start I should detail what we do for preseason. Most of our contracts go out in September. We are able to stake out our properties so we know where asphalt meets lawn and areas to avoid. We then input the accounts into our software system and print out laminated route sheets for each truck. All of our accounts are put into routes and we assign a foreman/crew leader to manage the route. So before our shovels and plows hit a driveway, we have invested hours into the account. We also maintain and check our trucks regularly throughout the season, whether or not we see snow in the immediate forecast. Broken plow lights, broken shear pins and broken truck mirrors were some of the casualties of Stella.
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Stella was a storm that started during the day, roughly 6-8AM Tuesday morning. A lot of our contracts have AM triggers (meaning we clear at a certain time in the morning if a certain amount of snow has fallen). We have others that have triggers throughout the day. This contract language is meant to reduce phone calls and miscommunication during a storm. For context, we have over a hundred plow accounts. Some are residential and some commercial. So knowing that Stella was upgraded to a 18-24 inch storm, we had a couple trucks out plowing our seasonal customers from 8AM Tuesday on. Stella finished dumping on us at around 9-10PM on Tuesday. Normally this is a great time for a storm to finish – we are able to clear snow through the night and only have a few clients left to serve. However, since we got nearly two feet of snow, every account took 2-3x the amount of time. Our AM Tuesday guys were still out plowing and all of our trucks were out and plowing by 1AM Wednesday. We had most of our clients cleared by 8AM Wednesday when the largest influx of phone calls for new clients came.
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We had done really well at clearing our contracted customers driveways and parking lots, when we got slammed with phone calls. With a couple guys already passed 24 hours straight of plowing, there were plenty of people calling in for their driveway to be cleared. Most of the time this is welcome, but this storm was difficult to manage, not to mention the extra accounts. We ended up taking on another dozen or so clients. By the time it ended we had one person out for 34 hours straight, another at 27 and a couple more at 20+ hours, not to mention the handful of guys who did anywhere from 4-17 hours. Altogether, we may have put in 140 man-hours of clearing snow, just Tuesday and Wednesday. Thursday added another 40 on top of that. It’s always a tough stretch, but worth it.
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In the end, we were happy with our work on Stella. By Friday, we didn’t have any clients with any concerns. Some of our employees were happy with their overtime, others who couldn’t wait to get home and finally get to bed. All in all, we are just happy to get our clients back to their everyday work and keeping them safe.
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A few tips for someone looking for a plow driver either right before, or during, a storm:

• The difficult part with clearing a driveway that we have never been to is the likelihood of damaging the property and/or damaging our truck. The best thing to do is to have a couple photos of your property in summer time and an overhead drawing of your driveway. If that seems cumbersome, just getting a contractor to look at your property and write a contract for on-call work.
• If you don’t contract for your driveway to be done, please be patient as we try to get to your house. We have to serve our contracted clients first and we do our best to help new clients out afterwards.
• If you have an order out for your driveway to be cleared and you decide to do it yourself, please give us a heads up. Most drivers are tired, running solely on caffeine and to be honest, can be irritable. We are trying our best and it’s always appreciated if we know you don’t need us to come out.

This fall, we had the privilege of working on what was once the largest cotton mill in the world. The building was placed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1978 and is part of the Harmony Mills complex in Cohoes.
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We repaired the bricks on what used to be the power plant, constructed in 1911. There were multiple locations near the roof, windows and sides of the building that needed replacing. There were also places where bricks were falling off the building because the mortar was failing. We relaid those sections in order to prevent any further water damage and damage to the building itself. The owner plans to convert the space into a restaurant – we look forward to seeing how the inside transforms!

In early spring, we installed a patio around this customer’s pool and they recently opened up the pool for the season. They were kind enough to let us come back and grab some pictures – and we’re glad we did because look at how beautiful it looks! We hope they spend the summer lounging on a patio chair and soaking up some rays. ​

As landscapers, we install mulch regularly. Most of our landscaping clients want new mulch every spring to freshen up their flower beds and enjoy a beautiful yard all summer long. However, there are more benefits to mulching your gardens than just aesthetics.
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• Mulch helps with weed suppression. It does not completely eliminate weeds as they will germinate on top of mulch and some grow through the mulch from the dirt below. Preen can be added to the mulch to help even further. However, nothing works better than actually just pulling the few that come up every 3 weeks or so.
• Mulch helps retain moisture in the soil. As the sun hits, the layers of mulch particles will prevent evaporation of the moisture at the soil level. As rain or a sprinkler provides moisture, the mulch will allow it to permeate through to your plants.
• Mulch provides insulation from extreme weather. While the summer heat will try to evaporate the moisture in the soil or dry out your plants, mulch adds a barrier of protection. Likewise, frost can hurt shallow root plants and mulch keeps the temperature of the soil higher during those abnormally cold days. Additionally, mulch prevents the soil erosion during hard rainfalls.
• Mulch provides nutrients as it breaks down. Mulch is made up of organic material. As it breaks down, the material provides new fresh nutrients to your plants. This helps them to grow and flourish.

We are often asked which color mulch is best. While this is a preference, there are other factors in selecting a color. The three basic mulch colors are red, black and premium brown. Red and black are dyed mulches; they are essentially pallet boards sent through a grinder and blasted with dye. After about a year, the dye washes off and the mulch fades considerably. Also, the dyed mulches tend to take longer to break down and amend the soil because they are such large pieces. Oftentimes we find ourselves removing these mulches after a couple years because they don’t break down. For these reasons, we recommend premium brown mulch. This is a natural product and has not been dyed so it breaks down quicker and amends the soil. You do need to lightly apply more mulch since it breaks down; however, you will have more nutrient rich soil as a result. Premium brown mulch also remains consistent throughout the year and will not fade.

Clients also ask us often about weed paper. We do not recommend installing weed paper since the initial benefits do not outweigh the initial costs, future costs and trouble. Typically, if you install weed paper, you will enjoy a weed-free garden that first year. Then spring comes and you find exposed weed paper due to frost heaving. Since this doesn’t look appealing, you rip out the exposed portions. Dust in the air will also eventually settle on your mulch, allowing for weeds to germinate on top and grow through the weed paper. So, you will be weeding anyway. Additionally, weed paper prevents moisture from permeating through to your plants, preventing the nutrients from mulch breaking down and amending your soil. It might seem great to have no/low maintenance option but in the end, it will cost you later.

We recently completed a beautiful backyard paver patio at a customer’s house. These clients unfortunately hired a bad contractor this spring and ended up with a misshapen and awkward concrete patio. Not only that, but the concrete was poured at different times, resulting in an uneven and discolored appearance.
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The customers hired us to fix the problem. Rather than jackhammering the entire patio and redoing it, we decided to lay patio pavers on top. This solution was cheaper than starting from scratch, and it was an upgrade to the actual patio. To start, we needed to jackhammer out a section and install another in order to round out the corners.

We started our first landscaping project a few weeks ago and ever since, have been in full-fledged spring mode. This is a surprise to even us, since we generally don’t start these types of projects until April. We welcome the spring weather since that means we can get back to work outside. We couldn’t be happier – this is why we are in this line of work.
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Last week we began a project creating a walkway for a customer using flagstones. We love this style since the stones are natural and each is unique. This particular customer already had the majority of the stones we would need prior to the project and we started almost immediately. We dug out 8 inches of soil from the pathway and laid down geosynthetic fabric to stabilize the soil. Then we installed 5 inches of crusher run as a base. These methods prevent the walkway from settling and shifting over the years with freezing and thawing. We finally added an inch of concrete sand as a leveler.