If you’ve noticed small sandy mounds between your paver stones or watched ants marching along your interlock driveway or patio, you’re not alone. Ant infestations in interlock joints are one of the most common maintenance issues Ottawa homeowners face during spring and summer months. While these tiny insects may seem harmless, they can actually compromise the integrity of your interlocking pavement over time.
Understanding why ants are attracted to paver joints and how to effectively eliminate them is crucial for maintaining the beauty, stability, and longevity of your interlock surfaces. In this comprehensive guide, we’ll explore the science behind ant infestations in interlock, the damage they cause, and the most effective prevention and treatment strategies available to Ottawa homeowners.
Why Ants Love Interlock Paver Joints
Ants don’t infest interlock pavers randomly—your patio or driveway offers them the perfect habitat for several key reasons:
Ideal Nesting Conditions
The narrow joints between pavers create protected channels that ants find irresistible for nest building. These spaces offer shelter from rain, predators, and temperature extremes while providing easy access to food sources in your yard. The sand base beneath interlocking pavers is particularly attractive because it’s easy for ants to excavate and tunnel through, allowing them to establish extensive colony networks.
Deteriorated or Missing Joint Sand
When the original jointing sand between your pavers begins to erode—whether from weather, power washing, or simply age—it creates loose material that’s incredibly easy for ants to manipulate. Traditional masonry sand offers zero resistance to ant excavation, essentially serving as an invitation for colony establishment. Once ants move in, they actively remove more sand to expand their tunnels, accelerating the deterioration process.
Warmth and Sun Exposure
Interlock pavers absorb and retain heat from sunlight, creating a warm microclimate that’s particularly attractive to ants during cooler spring and fall months. This warmth helps ant colonies develop faster and remain active for longer periods throughout the year. South-facing patios and driveways are especially vulnerable to ant colonization for this reason.
Access to Food and Water
Your interlock surfaces often collect organic debris like fallen leaves, grass clippings, and food particles from outdoor dining. These materials provide food for ants and other insects. Additionally, the joints between pavers can channel and collect water, providing both drinking water and humidity that many ant species require.
The Hidden Damage Ants Cause to Interlock Stability
While individual ants are tiny, an established colony can number in the thousands or even millions, and their collective activity can seriously compromise your interlock installation:
Sand Displacement and Loss
As ants tunnel through the joint sand, they bring particles to the surface, creating those telltale sandy mounds you see between pavers. This sand is effectively lost from the joints, creating voids beneath and between your pavers. Over time, this sand loss reduces the interlock between stones, allowing individual pavers to shift, settle unevenly, or rock when stepped on.
Compromised Structural Integrity
The joint sand in interlock installations doesn’t just fill space—it plays a critical structural role by locking pavers together and distributing weight evenly across the surface. When ants remove this sand, the entire system becomes less stable. You may notice pavers that shift when driven over, edges that sink, or joints that widen over time. In severe cases, this can lead to trip hazards and uneven surfaces that require costly interlock repair.
Accelerated Weed Growth
The sand mounds that ants bring to the surface create perfect seed beds for weed germination. Additionally, the tunnels ants create provide easy pathways for weed roots to establish themselves deep in the base material. This creates a compound problem where you’re dealing with both weeds in your interlock joints and ant colonies simultaneously.
Water Infiltration Issues
When joint sand is displaced by ant activity, it creates channels where water can penetrate more deeply into the base material. In Ottawa’s freeze-thaw climate, this water infiltration can lead to frost heave, where freezing water expands and pushes pavers upward unevenly. This seasonal movement further destabilizes your interlock and can create significant damage over multiple winter cycles.
Effective Treatment Options for Ant Infestations
If you’re currently dealing with ants in your interlock, here are the most effective treatment approaches:
Targeted Insecticide Applications
Ant-specific insecticides formulated for outdoor use can be applied directly to affected joints and the surrounding area. Products containing ingredients like permethrin, bifenthrin, or fipronil are particularly effective against pavement ants and other species common to Ottawa. For best results, apply treatments in late afternoon when ants are most active, and water the area lightly afterward to help the product penetrate into the colony tunnels.
Diatomaceous Earth Treatment
Food-grade diatomaceous earth is a natural, non-toxic option that works by physically damaging the ants’ exoskeletons, causing dehydration. Sprinkle it liberally into joints where ant activity is present. While effective, this approach requires reapplication after rain and works more slowly than chemical treatments.
Boiling Water Method
For small, localized ant colonies, carefully pouring boiling water directly into the affected joints can kill ants on contact and destroy shallow nest chambers. This method is chemical-free but requires extreme caution to avoid injury and may damage any vegetation near the treated area.
Professional Pest Control
For severe or persistent infestations, professional pest control services can identify the specific ant species you’re dealing with and apply commercial-grade treatments that aren’t available to consumers. They can also treat the source colonies that may be located in adjacent lawn or garden areas.
Long-Term Prevention: The Polymeric Sand Solution
While treating existing ant problems is important, prevention is the most effective long-term strategy for keeping your interlock ant-free:
What Is Polymeric Sand?
Polymeric sand is a specialized jointing material that combines fine sand particles with polymer additives. When properly installed and activated with water, these polymers create chemical bonds that essentially transform the loose sand into a semi-rigid, permeable material. This hardened joint material creates a physical barrier that ants cannot easily penetrate or excavate.
How Polymeric Sand Prevents Ant Infestations
Unlike regular masonry sand, which ants can easily tunnel through, properly activated polymeric sand becomes too hard for ants to dig through while remaining flexible enough to accommodate the slight movement that occurs in interlock installations. The polymer bonds create a continuous, solid mass in each joint that eliminates the loose particles ants need to construct tunnels and nests.
Additionally, polymeric sand’s hardened surface prevents the accumulation of organic debris in joints and reduces the moisture that attracts ants. This creates an environment that’s fundamentally inhospitable to ant colonization.
Additional Benefits of Polymeric Sand
Beyond ant prevention, polymeric sand offers several other important advantages:
- Weed suppression: The hardened joints prevent weed seeds from germinating and establishing roots
- Erosion resistance: Polymeric sand resists washout from rain and power washing far better than regular sand
- Enhanced stability: The solid joints improve overall interlock and reduce paver movement
- Reduced maintenance: You’ll spend far less time cleaning joints and dealing with weeds and insects
Professional Installation Matters
While polymeric sand is available for DIY installation, proper application is critical for achieving its full protective benefits. The installation process requires thorough joint cleaning, precise moisture control during activation, and careful technique to avoid haze on the paver surfaces. Professional polymeric sand installation ensures the product performs as designed and provides maximum protection against ants, weeds, and erosion.
Our team follows a meticulous process that includes complete removal of old sand, power washing and drying, precise polymeric sand application, and controlled activation. This attention to detail is what separates a polymeric sand installation that lasts 10+ years from one that fails within a season or two.
Maintenance Tips to Keep Ants Away
Whether you have traditional sand or polymeric sand in your joints, these maintenance practices will help minimize ant problems:
Regular Cleaning
Sweep your interlock surfaces weekly to remove organic debris, food particles, and other materials that attract ants. Pay special attention to areas near outdoor dining spaces and barbecue areas where food residue is most likely to accumulate.
Address Damage Promptly
If you notice any damaged joints, sunken pavers, or areas where sand has washed out, address these issues quickly before ants discover them. Small repairs are far less expensive than waiting until the problem spreads across larger areas of your interlock.
Perimeter Treatment
Consider applying an outdoor perimeter insecticide around the edges of your interlock surfaces during spring and early summer. This creates a chemical barrier that prevents ants from accessing your pavers in the first place.
Control Moisture
Ensure your interlock has proper drainage and isn’t collecting standing water. Redirect downspouts away from paved areas and fix any low spots where water pools. Reducing moisture makes your interlock less attractive to ants and other pests.
When to Call the Professionals
While some ant problems can be managed with DIY approaches, certain situations call for professional intervention:
- Ant infestations that persist despite multiple treatment attempts
- Large areas of affected interlock (more than 100 square feet)
- Visible settling, shifting, or instability in your pavers
- Joints that are missing significant amounts of sand
- Interlock that’s more than 5-7 years old and has never been re-sanded
Professional interlock contractors can assess the extent of damage, eliminate existing ant colonies, and restore your pavers with proper joint filling using high-quality polymeric sand. This comprehensive approach addresses both the immediate pest problem and the underlying conditions that allowed ants to establish themselves in the first place.
Protect Your Investment in Interlock
Your interlock driveway, patio, or walkway represents a significant investment in your property’s functionality and curb appeal. Don’t let tiny ants undermine that investment through structural damage and aesthetic deterioration. Whether you’re dealing with an active infestation or want to prevent future problems, taking action now will save you money and frustration down the road.
At Interlock Experts, we specialize in both treating existing ant problems and implementing long-term prevention solutions through professional polymeric sand installation. Our team has helped hundreds of Ottawa homeowners eliminate ant infestations and protect their interlock surfaces from future pest problems. We understand the unique challenges of maintaining interlock in Ottawa’s climate and use proven techniques that deliver lasting results.
Ready to reclaim your interlock from ants? Contact us today for a free assessment and quote. We’ll evaluate your specific situation, recommend the most effective treatment approach, and provide transparent pricing for all services. Don’t wait until minor ant activity becomes major structural damage—let our experts help you protect and preserve your beautiful interlock surfaces.
For more information on maintaining healthy interlock joints, check out our comprehensive polymeric sand installation guide for Ottawa homeowners, which covers everything you need to know about this game-changing jointing material.