Unilock Driveway & Pavers Nationwide | Barrett & Sons Construction

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

Unilock driveway and paver installation in Los Angeles typically runs $8,260 to $21,240 for a standard residential driveway, and the work usually takes three to five days once we break ground. We stock Unilock pavers and edge restraints on our trucks, and Tom Barrett can usually match your existing pattern the same day he looks at it. Most folks call us because they notice a low spot forming near the garage apron, a paver rocking underfoot near the downspout, or a sand joint that washes out after every heavy rain. That’s the base failing, not the paver itself, and it’s the first thing we check.

Call (877) 610-1318

Key takeaways:

• Unilock pavers rarely fail on their own. The base, edge restraint, or sand joint fails first.
• We match Unilock series, color, and pattern on-site, not from a catalog photo.
• Installed pricing covers excavation, base, bedding sand, pavers, edge restraint, and compaction.
• Barrett & Sons is an independent installer. We are not affiliated with Unilock, but we install their product daily.

Which Unilock Models This Applies To

We work with the full Unilock residential line you’ll find across Los Angeles driveways: Brussels Block, Courtstone, Mattoni, Thornbury, Richcliff, and the smooth-finish Series lines. The compatibility gotcha most owners hit is color lot. Unilock runs color in production lots, and a paver bought today for a driveway installed in 2018 won’t match exactly. The sun in Los Angeles fades surface pigment over three to five years, so even the same SKU looks different. We handle this two ways: we keep a small stock of the most common Los Angeles colors on hand, and for larger repairs we order from the same regional distributor and blend old and new pavers across the repair zone so the eye never sees a hard line.

To identify what you have, flip over a loose paver. You’ll usually find a molded code on the underside near the edge. Give us that code when you call, or take a photo in morning light and text it over. On the OEM-versus-aftermarket question: for Unilock specifically, we recommend staying with genuine Unilock pavers for any repair larger than a few square feet. Aftermarket lookalikes don’t match the joint spacing, the chamfer profile, or the color blend, and the mismatch shows up worse than the original damage did.

Signs Your Unilock Driveway & Pavers Is Failing

• Low spots or birdbaths that hold water after rain. Water pools because the base material has settled or washed out underneath. In Los Angeles, the freeze-thaw cycle isn’t the problem; it’s clay soil expanding and contracting through wet and dry seasons.
• A paver that rocks when you step on the corner. That’s a void in the bedding sand under one corner. Leave it alone long enough and that paver cracks under tire load.
• Sand washing out of the joints after every rain. The joint sand is doing its job only if it stays put. When it washes down the driveway, the pavers lose lateral support and start drifting apart at the edges.
• Edge pavers tipping outward at the driveway border. This is a failed or missing edge restraint. The plastic or aluminum edging has pulled loose or was never spiked deep enough, and the whole field starts to unravel from the outside in.
• Hairline cracks running across several pavers in a row. That line usually follows a weak joint in the base or an area we over-compacted when it was installed. A diagonal crack from the corner of the garage toward the street often points to a buried utility trench that settled.

Replacement Cost & What’s Included

For a full Unilock driveway replacement in Los Angeles, plan on $8,260 to $21,240 depending on square footage, access for equipment, and how much of the old base we can salvage and recompact. A paver patio runs $4,130 to $12,980. A partial repair, say replacing a sunken section by the garage apron, is priced by the square foot plus the base work, which itself can range from a few hundred dollars to over a thousand if the subgrade collapsed.

Here’s how a typical Unilock driveway replacement breaks down in Los Angeles:

• Excavation and haul-off of old driveway: $1,180 to $3,540
• Base material and compaction: $1,770 to $4,130
• Bedding sand: $295 to $708
• Unilock pavers (material only): $3,540 to $9,440
• Edge restraint and labor: $1,475 to $3,422

Every quote from Barrett & Sons is a written line item, not a lump sum. If we find a soft spot in the subgrade once we open the driveway, you get a written change order before we touch it, not a surprise on the final invoice. Every Unilock driveway we install carries our 90-Day Done Right Promise: if something’s off, one call brings Tom Barrett back.

DIY or Call Us?

You can safely check a few things yourself. Look for paver edges exposed at the sides, run a hose over the driveway and watch where water pools, and sweep a little extra joint sand into low joints. None of that requires anything more than your eyes and a broom. Where DIY goes sideways is digging out sunken pavers without addressing the base. If you pull a paver, add sand, and tap it back down, you’ve put a bandage on a cavity that’s still settling underneath. Within a season, it’s low again. And if the failure runs under the driveway where your sewer lateral or water main passes, you want a crew that knows how to hand-excavate around utilities without cracking a line. We carry the compaction equipment, the class 2 base, and the correct Unilock color on the truck, so the repair blends the day it’s done.

If you’d rather have an honest read on whether to patch or replace, call (877) 610-1318 and we’ll come look. There’s no trip charge inside Los Angeles County.

FAQs

Call Barrett & Sons for Unilock Driveway & Pavers in Los Angeles

If your Unilock driveway is settling, washing out, or cracking, don’t wait until a paver breaks and turns a repair into a replacement. Call Tom Barrett and his crew at (877) 610-1318 for a free estimate on any Unilock driveway or paver repair in Los Angeles. We’ll walk the job with you, tell you exactly what failed, and put the scope in writing. We’ll do it right the first time, or we’ll come back and make it right.

We also stock and install parts for KraftMaid, Cambria, and Silestone in kitchens and baths across Los Angeles.

Written by Tom Barrett, Owner, Barrett & Sons Construction at Barrett & Sons Construction, serving Los Angeles and nearby areas.