Ameristar Driveway & Pavers Nationwide | Barrett & Sons Construction

Ameristar Driveway & Pavers: The Los Angeles Owner’s Guide

We stock and install Ameristar-compatible driveway and paver parts, and in Los Angeles you’re looking at a typical installed price of $8,260 to $21,240 for a full paver driveway replacement, with smaller part swaps and repairs falling between $295 and $2,125 depending on what failed. Most owners don’t discover a failing paver system until they notice a low spot gathering water near the garage, or a single paver that’s sunk a half-inch and now catches the toe of a boot every time they walk past. You call us, we come out, we match what you have, and we tell you honestly whether it’s a one-day repair or a full re-lay.

Call (877) 610-1318

Tom Barrett has been running Barrett & Sons Construction since 1998, and we’ve pulled enough Ameristar pavers out of Los Angeles driveways to know exactly what fails, why it fails, and what it costs to make it right. We’re an independent contractor, not affiliated with Ameristar, which means we stock parts that work with their systems without being tied to one factory’s price book.

Which Ameristar Models This Applies To

Ameristar runs three main paver and driveway product lines, and the part you need depends on which one you have. The Classic series uses a standard 2⅜-inch thick paver with square edges, and it’s the one we see most often in Los Angeles driveways built between 2005 and 2018. The Estate series runs thicker at 3⅛ inches and uses a beveled edge. The Commercial series is a 3+ inch unit rated for heavier vehicle loads and shows up on long rural driveways and in front of workshops.

Here’s the compatibility gotcha that catches a lot of owners: Ameristar changed their joint gap tolerance in 2016. Pre-2016 pavers sat on a ⅜-inch spacer during install, and the 2016-and-later units use a ½-inch spacer. If you try to patch a pre-2016 driveway with newer pavers without adjusting the spacing, the patch visibly doesn’t match, and you’ll fight it with sand for a year before giving up. We measure the existing joint gaps before we quote anything.

On the OEM versus aftermarket question for Ameristar specifically: the OEM pavers are good quality, but there are two Southern California aftermarket manufacturers whose color-matching and thickness tolerance we trust, and they run roughly 18-22% less than Ameristar-branded stock. If your driveway is older than eight years, and especially if it faces western sun like most Los Angeles hillside homes, a new OEM paver next to a sun-faded original will stand out regardless. We lay samples in daylight before we commit.

Signs Your Ameristar Driveway & Pavers Is Failing

• A paver that rocks underfoot or wobbles when you step on it. Usually means the bedding sand underneath has washed out through a failed edge restraint. Los Angeles winter rain finds the gap, and every storm pulls a little more sand toward the street.
• A low spot or visible dip that holds water after it rains. This is almost always base failure underneath, not the paver itself. In Los Angeles, it’s frequently from a slow irrigation leak that saturated the base and caused compaction loss.
• Spider-cracking or a paver that’s split clean through the middle. Ameristar pavers are concrete, and repeated vehicle weight on a slightly hollow base will crack them. We see this on driveways where a heavy truck or RV parks in the same spot day after day.
• Sand washing out between joints every time it rains. Polymeric sand breaks down over time, especially under Los Angeles sun. Once it’s gone, pavers drift, and the whole field starts shifting.
• A paver sunk an inch or more in one spot while the rest looks fine. That’s a point-load failure, often a root from a nearby tree that pushed up through the base, or an old utility trench that was never compacted properly.

Replacement Cost & What’s Included

For a straightforward Ameristar part swap on a Los Angeles driveway, you’re generally between $295 and $825 when we’re replacing a handful of pavers, re-setting an edge, or re-sanding joints. A partial re-lay of a settled section runs $1,180 to $3,540. A full paver driveway replacement runs $8,260 to $21,240, and the spread comes down to square footage, what we find when we pull up the old base, and how much new base material has to come in.

Every quote is a written line item. Parts, labor, haul-away, base material, and sand all listed separately. If anything changes once we open it up, that change comes to you in writing as a change order before we do the work, same as every Barrett & Sons job since 1998. The work itself carries our 90-Day Done Right Promise: if it’s not right, Tom comes back and makes it right. One call.

DIY or Call Us?

You can replace a single Ameristar paver if the base underneath is still solid, the existing sand is dry and workable, and you’ve got the same thickness paver on hand. It’s honest work an afternoon can handle. Where DIY goes wrong fast is when that one paver is just the visible symptom. If the base has failed, if there’s a root, if the edge restraint is gone, then replacing the paver buys you six months before it sinks again. We’ve torn out plenty of DIY patches in Los Angeles where the owner spent three weekends and four trips to the supply yard and still had a wobble.

And if the part involved is any kind of retaining wall block or stair unit on your paver system, leave it alone. Those carry load, and a failed wall section is genuinely dangerous. We’ll look at it, tell you what’s actually wrong, and give you a written number. Call (877) 610-1318.

FAQs