You can purchase the travertine either way. However, during install, the holes in the unfilled will be filled with grout. It will still look more rustic, but there won't be holes to fill with dirt. You should never install on a floor and leave the holes unfilled. They will fill with something yucky that you don't want there.

I'm building a pool. They dug deep trenches around the pool for the piping. I plan on having a travertine deck around the pool, on 4" of crushed rock and 2" of sand on top of that. The pavers are 1 1/2" thick. My question is, what should I backfill the trenches with to fill the voids, pack it down and avoid any settling? The PB is suggesting sand. Thanks for your help.

The problem is the material that came out is serious chunks of rock. I have solid rock about a foot and a half down. Putting this back in will create voids I fear. Bobcat won't fit around the pool, it's a small area close to the house. I want to wheelbarrow the huge chunks of rock out of there and come back in with clean fill and compact it, but I'd love to hear what you all think. Thanks

Apparently, to my embarrassment, I can match your obduracy. The etymology I quoted earlier was from Merriam-Webster, although I implied it was from the OED (as I didn't anticipate it would matter). Here is the actual OED entry: Pronunciation: /ÃÂtraevÃÂtên/ Forms: Also trevertine. Etymology: travertino , older tivertino "a kind of stone to build withall" (Florio) tëburtënus Tiburtine adj. Compare French travertin , in Cotgrave trevertin . Here is a quote from 1555, where the form is not yet "Travertine": 1555 R. Eden tr. Peter Martyr of Angleria Decades of Newe Worlde f. 340, And [silver] is often tymes founde in an other stone lyke vnto Treuertino or in Treuertino it selfe. The etymology listed above the quote cites Florio, which is an Italian-English dictionary. The 1611 version is available online. It does NOT contain an Italian entry for travertino, but only for tivertino, (written as tiuertino) which it defines (in English) as "a kind of building marble." It also cites Cotgrave, which is a French-English dictionary. The 1611 version (coincidentally) of that is also available online, and it defines the French word Trevertin as meaning "A kind of marble or marble-like stone." IMHO, the change to "travertine" (sometime between 1555 and 1730) may have been influenced by the roots you cite. However, it would be a remarkable coincidence if there were a word in Italian tivertino (written in Florio as tiuertino), a word in French Trevertin, and a word in English "Treuertino" in the 17th century, and then later an entirely new word "travertine" meaning exactly the same thing sprang into the English language based entirely upon your etymology of the root "tra-". You are free to believe this, of course, but Occam's razor would dictate otherwise. The readers of this forum will decide for themselves. Here is a link that might be useful: Florio entry for tivertino