Geraldton Paving Maintenance Schedule: Make It Last

The schedule

Print it, stick it in the shed, tick it off.

Grouped by how often each job needs doing, with the DIY items and the get-a-pro items kept separate so you know what to book and what to just go and do. Your ticks are saved in this browser, and the print button gives you a clean one-page version with the website chrome stripped out.

After every storm or big blow (DIY, 15 minutes)

Walk the paving and look for a new puddle. Water sitting where it never used to sit means the levels have changed underneath.
Check for joint sand washed into a line along the low edge, and sweep it back in rather than hosing it away.
Look at the face of every retaining wall for fresh soil or water weeping through. That means the drainage behind it is blocked.
Check the soakwell lids are seated and not cracked, and that nothing has ponded over them.
Press on any paver that looks out of line. If it rocks, cone it off and put it on the repair list.
Clear leaf litter and seed heads out of the joints and off the drain grates before they compost into the gaps.

Every season, four times a year (DIY, one hour)

Hose the salt off coastal paving and limestone walls with fresh water. Salt crystallising inside the stone is what frets the surface.
Sweep the whole pavement. Wind-blown sand sitting on the surface holds moisture and feeds weeds and lichen.
Top up any joint that has dropped more than about 3mm below the paver surface.
Pull or spot spray weeds while they are small. Weeds are a symptom of an empty joint, so fix the joint too.
Check where the reticulation is throwing. Sprinklers hitting paving or a limestone wall with bore water cause the orange iron staining.
Deal with oil drips straight away with an absorbent and a degreaser. A fresh drip lifts, a 6 month old one usually does not.
Look along the outer row of the pavement from one end. A row that has moved off line means the edge restraint is going.

Every autumn, before the winter rain (DIY, half a day)

Open and clear every soakwell. Most of Geraldton annual rain falls between May and August, and a silted soakwell in April is a washout in July.
Flush the agricultural drain behind each retaining wall from the high end and confirm water comes out of the outlet.
Clear the downpipes and check that none of them discharges within 3 metres of the back of a retaining wall.
Pull mulch and garden soil back from the top course of every wall so water can run away rather than sit against it.
Check that paving next to the house still falls away from the wall and still sits below the damp-proof course and the weep holes.
Photograph each retaining wall from the same spot every year. A photo set is the only cheap way to prove whether a wall is moving.

Once a year (DIY, a day)

Wash the pavement properly. Wide fan tip, nozzle at least 300mm back, never a turbo nozzle.
Top the joints back up after washing, because even a careful wash takes some sand out.
Treat iron staining from bore water with a proprietary iron stain remover. Never use acid on limestone.
Cut back roots and branches within about 2 metres of paving and walls. Roots lift pavers and shade grows lichen.
Measure and write down the lean of every retaining wall with a spirit level, at the same three points each year.
Check the pool surround levels against the pool barrier, because ground movement can change the effective barrier height.

Once a year: get a professional

Have any rocking or dished area assessed before it spreads. A localised lift and relay is $350 to $900; a whole driveway is not.
Get failing edge restraint re-established at $25 to $45 per linear metre. This is the repair most often skipped and most often needed.
Have any wall over 1 metre high that has moved measurably in a year looked at properly rather than watched for another year.
Book a soakwell inspection if you have had a localised dip near a downpipe. Replacement is $900 to $2,600.

Every 3 to 5 years: get a professional

Full re-sand with a stabilised or polymeric jointing sand at $15 to $35 per square metre. Coastal properties at the shorter end.
Re-seal sealed limestone or a sealed feature area. Expect $15 to $35 per square metre and a 3 to 5 year life.
Re-bed and re-bond any loose retaining wall capping at $45 to $95 per linear metre before it becomes a hazard.
Review the whole pavement against the original scope: base, edges, falls and drainage, not just how it looks.

Stop the schedule and get it looked at now

A retaining wall leaning more than about 25mm per metre of height, or a top course overhanging.
A hole or soft spot in a driveway, especially near a downpipe or the garage. Keep vehicles off it.
A crack in a wall that has visibly widened between two of your annual photographs.
Water running towards the house instead of away from it after a downpour.
A trip lip of 15mm or more anywhere on a path people use.

What actually kills paving in Geraldton.

Every region wears its paving out differently, and a maintenance routine copied from a Perth or east coast website will have you sealing things that do not need sealing and ignoring the things that will cost you thousands. Five local conditions do the damage here.

Wind scour. The strong afternoon south-westerly that Geraldton lives with for most of the summer is the number one destroyer of segmental paving in this town. It lifts loose washed jointing sand out of open joints a little more every afternoon. Once the joints are empty, the interlock that makes a paved surface structural is gone, each paver becomes a loose block on sand, and the bedding starts working out from underneath. That is why the re-sand sits at the top of the schedule and why it uses a stabilised sand, not the washed sand a cheap job goes in with.

Salt. Properties near Tarcoola Beach, Drummond Cove and Glenfield get salt-laden air constantly, and the damage is not on the surface. Salt is carried into the pore structure of limestone and mortar in solution, then crystallises as it dries and expands, which frets the face off the stone from the inside. A quarterly fresh water rinse is genuinely effective and costs nothing. There is more on choosing materials for this in the best paving for coastal wind.

Concentrated winter rain. Geraldton gets around 440mm a year and most of it arrives between May and August. Drainage sits idle and untested for eight months and then takes the year in a handful of fronts. Anything marginal fails in that window, which is why the pre-winter drain clean-out is on the schedule as its own section. Ex tropical cyclone Seroja, which crossed the coast near Kalbarri in April 2021, is the reminder that this coast also sees loads well outside a normal front.

The two soil types. On the coastal fringe you are on deep calcareous dune sand, which carries load poorly and migrates once water moves through it, so the failure mode is washout and voids. Inland around Mount Tarcoola and Wandina there is more reactive clay, which swells and shrinks seasonally, so the failure mode is heave, stepping and diagonal cracking. Same town, opposite problems.

Bore water. Mid West groundwater carries dissolved iron, and any sprinkler throwing onto paving or a limestone wall leaves an orange deposit that builds up over a season. It is cosmetic, but it is stubborn, and the fix is to move the sprinkler rather than to keep buying stain remover.

The cost of neglect, in real numbers.

Paving deteriorates in stages, and each stage costs several times the one before it. Take a typical 45 square metre double driveway in Geraldton and follow it through.

Stage one, empty joints. Re-sand with a stabilised jointing sand: $675 to $1,575. Takes half a day and buys another 3 to 5 years.
Stage two, pavers rocking over a few square metres. Localised lift and relay: $350 to $900 for a small area, or $2,000 to $3,600 if it has spread across the whole driveway at $45 to $80 per square metre.
Stage three, dishing and ponding with the base moving. Full lift, base rebuild and relay: $3,400 to $7,700 on the same driveway, plus edge restraint at $25 to $45 per linear metre.
Stage four, the base is gone. Remove and replace: $30 to $70 per square metre to take the old work out, then $75 to $170 per square metre to build new. On 45 square metres that is $4,700 to $10,800.

The retaining wall version of the same story is starker. Clearing the drain behind a wall costs nothing if you do it and $180 to $450 if we do it. Leaving it blocked until the wall rotates costs $350 to $650 per square metre of wall face to rebuild, which on a 12 metre wall averaging 1.2 metres high is $5,000 to $9,400, plus $800 to $2,200 for an engineer’s design and a City of Greater Geraldton building permit if the wall is over 500mm or carries a surcharge. The permit process is set out on the retaining wall permit page.

One afternoon a year with a shovel and a hose is the difference between those two numbers. That is the whole argument.

What service life you should actually expect.

A paver is a manufactured unit that will comfortably outlive the person who laid it. What wears out is the system around it, so quote yourself these numbers rather than the paver warranty.

The pavement as a whole: 25 to 30 years maintained, 10 to 15 years neglected. That is the entire point of this page. More detail on how long paving lasts in Geraldton.
Stabilised jointing sand: 3 to 5 years on the coast, 5 to 8 years inland. Loose washed sand on a coastal job: one summer.
Penetrating sealer on limestone: 3 to 5 years, less on a driveway that carries traffic every day.
Edge restraint: as long as the concrete haunch stays intact, which is decades, provided nobody digs a garden bed hard against it.
Limestone or segmental retaining wall with working drainage: 30 to 50 years. Without drainage, 8 to 15.
Soakwells: 20 to 30 years for modern polypropylene units, less for old concrete ones that are already cracked.

What voids a warranty, and the maintenance we would tell you to skip.

Paver manufacturers and paving contractors both warrant their part of the job, and both warranties are easy to lose by accident. The usual ways it happens:

Acid cleaning. Hydrochloric acid and acid based cleaners will strip the surface off limestone and burn the cement paste out of concrete pavers. It is the fastest way to void a product warranty and the damage is permanent.
Turbo nozzle pressure washing. A concentrated jet cuts the joints out, etches the face and, on a driveway, can move the bedding sand. Wide fan tip, 300mm back.
Sealing too early. New paving needs 6 to 12 months for efflorescence to finish before it is sealed. Seal over it and you lock the salts under the film, which looks worse than the efflorescence did.
The wrong sealer. A film-forming sealer on a driveway that gets hot Geraldton sun and vehicle traffic will cloud, peel and then need stripping at a cost close to the original job.
Vehicles on pedestrian-rated paving. Thin pavers laid on a path base will fail under a car, and no warranty covers that.
Changing the drainage behind a retaining wall. Backfilling over the ag drain, building a garden bed against the wall or redirecting a downpipe behind it will void a workmanship warranty and will usually cause the failure it excludes.

Now the honest part. There is maintenance sold in this market that we would tell you not to buy. You do not need an annual seal on a driveway; a seal is a 3 to 5 year item and doing it yearly wastes money and builds film. You do not need a full pressure wash every spring; on most Geraldton properties a sweep and a rinse does the job and does not cost you jointing sand. You do not need weed spraying as a subscription, because weeds are a symptom of empty joints and the re-sand fixes the cause. And you do not need to reseal limestone that is simply going pale, because pale limestone is limestone doing what it does in the sun.

Spend the money instead on joints, edges and drainage. Those three protect the base, and the base is the only part of a pavement that is genuinely expensive to fix. If you want to know what a good build looks like in the first place, the buyer guide on choosing a paving contractor covers what to check in a quote, and if something on this schedule has already gone past maintenance, the warning signs page tells you which stage you are at. If a wall is moving today, start with the emergency steps, and if you are about to list the property, the pre-sale page sorts the jobs worth doing from the jobs that are not.

Get a price

Get the pro items on this schedule priced

Tell us roughly how many square metres you have and what the schedule flagged, and we will send an itemised written quote, normally within one business day.

Maintenance questions.

How often should paving joints be re-sanded in Geraldton?

Every 3 to 5 years on a coastal property, and every 5 to 8 years further inland, because the strong afternoon sea breeze scours loose sand out of open joints season after season. The job costs $15 to $35 per square metre with a stabilised jointing sand, so a 45 square metre driveway is $675 to $1,575. It is the single highest return maintenance job in paving, because empty joints are what start almost every failure we are called to.

How long should paving last in Geraldton?

The pavers themselves will outlast you, but the pavement as a system lasts 20 to 30 years when the joints, edges and drainage are maintained and only 10 to 15 years when they are not. A sealer needs redoing every 3 to 5 years, stabilised joints every 3 to 8 years depending on exposure, and a limestone retaining wall with working drainage will hold for 30 to 50 years. Neglect does not shorten the life gently, it collapses it.

What does it cost to neglect paving maintenance?

A re-sand at $15 to $35 per square metre becomes a lift and relay at $45 to $80 per square metre once the bedding starts washing out, and a full rebuild at $75 to $170 per square metre once the base has gone. On a 45 square metre driveway that is roughly $1,100 versus $2,800 versus $5,500 or more. The same pattern applies to a retaining wall, where a $180 to $450 drain clean-out prevents a rebuild at $350 to $650 per square metre of wall face.

Can I pressure wash my paving in Geraldton?

Yes, carefully. Use a wide fan tip, keep the nozzle at least 300mm from the surface and never use a narrow turbo tip, because a concentrated jet strips the jointing sand and etches the face of concrete and limestone pavers. Plan to top the joints up afterwards, because even a careful wash removes some sand. Avoid acid based cleaners on limestone entirely.

What voids a paver manufacturer warranty?

The common ones are acid cleaning, high pressure washing with a turbo nozzle, sealing before efflorescence has finished which usually takes 6 to 12 months on new work, using the wrong sealer, and putting vehicles on paving that was specified for pedestrian traffic only. Altering the drainage behind a retaining wall will also void the workmanship warranty on that wall. Keep your invoice and any product data sheet, because a warranty claim without them goes nowhere.

Why is my Geraldton paving stained orange?

That is iron staining from bore water. Mid West groundwater carries dissolved iron, and every sprinkler that throws onto paving or a limestone wall leaves a rust coloured deposit that builds up over a season. Move or shield the sprinklers first, then treat the stain with a proprietary iron stain remover, and expect to repeat it roughly every 12 months while the reticulation keeps hitting the paving.

How to make Geraldton paving last twice as long: the maintenance schedule.