Brick sidewalks are like teeth. If you don’t do teeth maintenance, your gums recede and your teeth fall out. Our sidewalks mainly use sand to fill the joints between bricks rather than mortar. This old, well-established technique provides the desired look of old Baltimore, but if the sand recedes, the bricks fall out.
Go buy a broom and a 50 pound sack of sand for a 14 to 18 foot sidewalk. Home Depot will load the sack into your trunk and your kindly neighbor will help you unload.
Dump the sand onto the sidewalk in front of your house.
Sweep it around for a while. It’s a lovely, quiet, contemplative activity that gives you a sense of mastery over at least one aspect of your life.
Eventually, the entire 50 pounds of sand will magically vanish into the cracks between the bricks and you’re done for at least a year or two. If you’d like, you can mist the sidewalk lightly with your garden hose to settle the sand in case the next rainstorm is a torrential gully washer.
One more note, you might consider using sand rather than salt on snowy winter sidewalks to get two benefits for the price of one.
From Harborwalk Happenings – September, 2018