Free written scope consultation - allowances, timeline, and change-order rules on paper before a single trade is scheduled
Unilock Driveway & Pavers: The Fort Lauderdale Owner’s Guide
If your Unilock driveway or paver patio is sinking, shifting, or showing gaps you can’t explain, the most common culprits are a failed base layer, an edge restraint that let go, or a paver that was never rated for South Florida’s heat and rain cycles. In Fort Lauderdale, we stock and install Unilock-compatible pavers and replacement units, with typical paver driveway work running $7,000 – $18,000 and smaller repair jobs falling well below that depending on square footage and access. Most owners discover the problem the same way: after a heavy summer downpour, water pools where it didn’t before, or a wheel settles into a dip that grew over six months and suddenly feels like a pothole.
Which Unilock Models This Applies To
Unilock’s paver lines fall into a few product families, and matching a replacement part means knowing which one you have. The EnduraColor series, including Courtstone, Richcliff, and Umbriano, carries its color through the full paver body, so a chipped corner is far less visible than on a face-mix paver. The Elegance line runs a premium stone-look top layer over a concrete core. The practical gotcha in Fort Lauderdale: face-mix pavers from Elegance and Series lines can fade unevenly under our UV exposure, and a single replacement paver from a different production batch will not match a sun-bleached driveway, even if the color code is identical. Before we order a single unit, we check the paver’s underside for the manufacturing code and measure thickness and chamfer. If the paver is discontinued, quality aftermarket matches from Belgard or local Fort Lauderdale stone yards often sit within 1-2 millimeters of the Unilock original, but we’ll show you the color match side by side before anything goes in the ground.
Penhallow Remodeling Fort Lauderdale is an independent service provider and not affiliated with Unilock. We install and repair their products because the material is consistent and our clients ask for it by name, not because we’re tied to the factory.
Styles & brands we work with
Signs Your Unilock Driveway & Pavers Is Failing
- Pooling water that lingers 30 minutes after rain. Your paver surface is only as good as its base. In Fort Lauderdale, where the water table sits high and summer storms drop an inch in an hour, a base that was never properly compacted or drained will hold water and soften the sand bedding underneath.
- A paver that rocks underfoot or clicks when you walk on it. That single loose unit usually means the sand joint has washed out around it. Left alone, the movement spreads to neighboring pavers and the pattern starts to walk apart.
- Edge pavers pulling away from the border or curb. The edge restraint failing is the first domino in every paver driveway failure. Once the outer row can shift, the entire field loses tension and the interlock breaks.
- Low spots forming where the car’s tires track each day. Driveways carry constant load on the same two lines. If the base was thin or the subgrade wasn’t stabilized, those tire tracks sink over 2-3 years and hold water, accelerating the problem.
- White haze or spalling on the paver surface. Fort Lauderdale’s salt air plus constant humidity can degrade a paver’s surface seal, especially on face-mix lines. Hazing is cosmetic; spalling, where the surface actually pits and flakes, is structural and usually means the paver was never rated for a coastal driveway.
See the difference
Before
After
Before
After
Before
AfterReplacement Cost & What’s Included
For 2025 in Fort Lauderdale, a full paver driveway installation runs $7,000 – $18,000 depending on square footage, access to the site, and whether we’re excavating an existing slab or starting from dirt. Smaller repairs, like pulling and resetting a 100-square-foot section that’s holding water, typically land in the $1,200 – $3,500 range. What drives the number: base condition (if the base is shot, no new paver will fix it), paver line and availability (EnduraColor costs more than a basic Holland stone), and edge restraint replacement. Every quote includes the excavation or removal, base material, bedding sand, pavers, edge restraints, compaction, and polymeric joint sand. You get a written price before the first shovel goes in the ground, and the work falls under our 365-Day Done Right Promise: if it fails inside the guarantee period, we come back and fix it at no charge.
DIY or Call Us?
You can check a few things yourself. Lift the loose paver and look at the sand under it. If the sand is dark and compacted, that’s fine; if it’s gray and soupy, water is getting trapped. You can also hose-test your drainage: water should sheet to the edge, not pool in the middle. Where DIY goes wrong is when a homeowner re-sands joints without fixing the base or the slope, or tries to replace a single paver without matching the old one properly. You end up with a patch that looks like a patch forever. Paver work is physically heavy but not electrically dangerous; the risk is doing it twice. If you’re seeing any of the signs above, call us at (754) 551-2922 and we’ll take a look and tell you the truth about what it needs.
FAQs
A properly installed Unilock driveway in Fort Lauderdale lasts 25 to 40 years, but the base and drainage system carry most of that lifespan. The pavers themselves won’t fail; the ground under them will if it wasn’t prepared for our rain and water table.
Yes. If the base is sound and only a section has settled, we pull the pavers, re-compact and re-grade the base, and reset the units. We do this regularly in neighborhoods like Rio Vista and Victoria Park, where tree roots and old clay have shifted driveways over the years. If the base was never properly installed, a patch will sink again. Call (754) 551-2922 for an honest assessment before you spend money either way.
A small section repair usually takes one to two days. A full driveway teardown and rebuild in Fort Lauderdale typically runs five to eight working days, depending on access and whether we’re pulling an old concrete slab first.
We keep common Unilock styles and colors in our Fort Lauderdale inventory and source anything non-stock directly through our trade suppliers, who also carry KraftMaid, Cambria, and Silestone products for our interior work. If it’s a discontinued pattern, we’ll match the closest current line and show you the comparison before ordering. Estimates are free, so call (754) 551-2922 and we’ll check stock while you’re on the phone.
Written by Trevor Nash, Owner, Penhallow Remodeling Fort Lauderdale at Penhallow Remodeling Fort Lauderdale, serving Fort Lauderdale and nearby areas.
