Do driveway pavers need a different sealer than pool pavers?

ICPI's routing sentence comes before any product: the sealer manufacturer or supplier should be consulted before use to confirm the product suits the environment it will live in. A driveway and a pool deck are two environments, which is why the question of a different sealer comes up at all.

A driveway takes oil drippings and tire traffic. A pool deck takes splashed pool water, salt air and bare feet. ICPI writes about each exposure in its own sentence, and the table lines its words up side by side.

Gloss or flat is a separate choice from resistance, and the look each family gives is covered under paver sealing and its two families.

For the driveway, ICPI's words are about stains.

ICPI writes that “Acrylic sealers provide good stain resistance,” and that sealers which protect against stain penetration are useful around driveways “and where oil drippings are not wanted.” It adds a condition: “Their durability depends on traffic, the quality of the acrylic and the percentage of solids content.”

Tires complicate the picture. Euclid Chemical, writing about concrete sealers, says most discoloration from tire plasticizer shows up on acrylic cure and seals because acrylic polymers have minimal crosslinking, and that a penetrating silane or siloxane, which forms no film, may be the better choice where tire marking is a concern. How that marking happens is under why tires mark sealed pavers.

For the pool deck, ICPI's words are about chlorine and salt.

ICPI says silane and siloxane sealers help pavers around a pool resist degradation from chlorine, and that their resistance to chloride gives added protection where pavers face salt air. Their limit is oil: ICPI says they do not hold out petroleum stains without additives made for that purpose, which matters more on a driveway than beside a pool.

The makers' surface lists point the same way, with one wrinkle. SEK-Surebond calls its SB-1300 sealer “Ideal for shaded areas, pool decks and outdoor showers where mildew, fungus and algae are a concern.” Techniseal's (iN) Natural Look Protector, a penetrating matte product, is the only Protector in its Product Guide whose uses row names pool decks, and that same row also lists driveways, walkways and patios.

Bare feet add one more question. ICPI says slip and skid resistance should be maintained with a properly applied stabilizer or sealer, publishes no slip value in Tech Spec 5, and sends wet and dry slip performance to the product's maker; whether a grip additive belongs in the sealer is answered under can an anti-slip additive go on a sealed pool deck.

A product listed for both a driveway and a pool deck answers the question only for that product.

Techniseal sells two paver products with natural look in the name, the penetrating (iN) Natural Look Protector and the film-forming Natural Look (NS) Protector, and their slip lines point in opposite directions. The code in parentheses, not the words natural look, says which product a label describes, and the two are compared under matte and natural-look paver sealers.

Color belongs to the same label reading. ICPI says silanes and siloxanes initially enhance colors while acrylics enhance them with a gloss, and how much a surface shifts is answered under whether sealing changes paver color.

Tech Spec 5 does not pick a product for a particular property; it names who does.

ICPI's instruction is to consult the sealer manufacturer or supplier before any sealer is used. For a driveway and a pool deck on the same lot, that means checking one product against both environments, or choosing a product for each.