Unilock Driveway & Pavers Nationwide

Unilock Driveway & Pavers: The San Jose Owner’s Guide

Unilock driveway and paver installation in San Jose typically runs $8,260 to $21,240 installed, depending on square footage, paver line, and how much base prep the soil needs. We keep the most common Unilock paver lines available for local projects, and we can usually have a written estimate in your hand within a few days of walking the site. The paver itself rarely “fails” the way an appliance does. What fails is what’s under it: a base that settled, an edge that gave way, or drainage that never worked right in the first place.

Call (669) 272-2637

Which Unilock Models This Applies To

Unilock runs three main residential paver lines worth knowing: the Estate Stone (mid-range, clean tumbled edge, good for full driveways), the U-Cara Multi-Face (premium architectural finish, often used for feature bands and borders), and the Thornbury (large-format, popular in San Jose for driveways with visible frontage). The critical spec is paver thickness: driveways need 60mm minimum in most cases, while patios and walkways commonly use 45mm. If someone installed 45mm pavers on a driveway, that’s the root of most cracking. Identifying your existing paver means pulling one and looking for the Unilock stamp on the underside. We’re an independent contractor, not affiliated with Unilock, but we work with their product lines and match the color and profile from a photo or a physical sample. Aftermarket “Unilock-style” pavers exist, but they won’t match the manufacturing spec for color-fastness or freeze-thaw rating in our clay-heavy San Jose soil. We use genuine Unilock for any replacement so the layout doesn’t look patched.

Signs Your Unilock Driveway & Pavers Is Failing

• Pavers rocking underfoot at the edges. The edge restraint has failed or the base was never compacted to spec. Water gets under, then freeze-thaw cycles in winter do the rest.
• Low spots that pond after rain. The sub-base settled unevenly, usually from poor compaction or standing water that was never graded out. San Jose clay soil holds water and shifts more than most homeowners expect.
• Cracked pavers in the wheel path. Either the base gave way under tire load or the pavers themselves were under-spec for driveway use. 45mm pavers on a driveway crack exactly here first.
• Weed growth pushing through joints. Polymeric sand has broken down. That means water is now getting underneath, which starts the settlement problem all over again.
• Efflorescence or color fading across sections. If half the driveway looks chalky and the rest doesn’t, you’re looking at a patch job from a previous repair where colors didn’t match or the sealer wasn’t applied correctly.

Replacement Cost & What’s Included

Full Unilock driveway replacement in San Jose runs $8,260 to $21,240 for a standard two-car driveway, with the range driven by square footage, the paver line you choose, and whether we’re digging out and rebuilding the base or working over a base that’s still sound. Every estimate from Bradford Remodeling includes the demolition, excavation, new compacted base, edge restraint, paver install, and polymeric sand, all itemized so you see exactly what each line costs. Our 365-Day Done Right Promise means if the pavers shift, heave, or settle inside a year, we come back and fix it at no charge. Straight number, written scope, done when we said done. Paver patio work runs $4,130 to $12,980 if your driveway is fine but the walkway or rear patio needs the work instead.

DIY or Call Us?

You can safely pull one paver in the failing section to check the thickness and look at what’s underneath, take photos, and mark where water ponds during the next rain. That information speeds up any estimate. What you should not do is attempt to re-set a large section by scooping sand under it or “tapping them back down” with a rubber mallet. Uneven compaction causes the next paver over to fail, and now you’ve turned a 40-square-foot repair into a full driveway rebuild. If the damage is at the edge of the driveway, the base is failing, or you’re seeing cracking across multiple pavers, that’s an excavation problem, not a paver problem. Call (669) 272-2637 and we’ll walk the site with you and give you a written number.