[Jim 9922]

Originally Posted by Pturner

Agree with you about pavers. We bought a house with them. Recently had to replace many of the cracked and broken bricks. If we were starting from scratch, we wouldn't do it, although they do look very nice.

The Villages practice of retro fitting "pavers" over concrete for a driveway is just asking for trouble. Pavers should be laid on top of a thick bed of sand or "truepack". They can then settle, flex, isolate themselves from adjoining bricks and drain as a real paver roadway is designed to do. The Villages retrofit is nothing but a veneer brick, not a true driveway paver which is at least 4" thick. They are too thin for the weight placed on them, the too thin layer of sand washes away because water can't drain down, they mold because of poor water drainage, chip because of rubbing against each other because sand isolation is washed away ,etc,etc.
If you want to see how a real paver driveway should look and function drive though our neighbors at Harbor Hills where many of the homes have real paver drives that were properly built as paver drives, with proper sized and hardened bricks, laid on a proper bedding.
My concrete drives over the years seem to work out very well in all weather, year after year, without any maintenance except an ocassional sweeping for grass clippings. Pavers and painting may look nice, but why seek out additional extensive maintenance and headaches. Just drive through some of the 10 year old Villages neighborhoods to see what happens to some of the quick fix different driveway decorating methods after the Florida weather does its thing to them.