Hello,

We recently had a paver walkway installed. The pavers do not seem secure after installation, and we've kind of lost faith in the installer, so have some questions.

The installation went as follows:

• several inches of crusher run, compacted

• layer of sand, not sure if this was compacted or not

• pavers laid in running bond, bordered by pavers set in a small amount of cement (my wife said he just buttered these before laying them in the bed)

• dirt backfilled to edge of walkway

• playground sand brushed into the cracks (not a lot of this is left, already)

• no compacting of pavers

Afterwards, we noticed some movement in the pavers when we walk on the path. Also noticed a lot of the sand had washed out after the first rain. We questioned the installer about it and he basically brushed it off as a non-issue. When we pushed, he said they could come back with some polymeric sand after no rain for several days, and that should shore it up. I asked about compacting the walkway with the sand to help lock the pavers in, but he said they can't do that on clay pavers because it will literally break all of them.

We'd like to understand our best course of action now to preserve our investment. My initial questions:

• What is the best sand to help lock these pavers in place?

• We saw reference to compacting with a rubber mat in place to eliminate breakage. Is this acceptable practice?

• Given the small amount of cement used to hold the edge pavers, would we be wise to install edge restraints as a backup? Will the compactor break the cement base?

• Any other advice for us?

Thanks in advance!

Greg