Belgard Home Additions & ADU Nationwide

Belgard Home Additions & ADU: The Fort Lauderdale Owner’s Guide

Belgard pavers and retaining wall systems for home additions and ADUs in Fort Lauderdale typically run $45,000-$130,000 installed, depending on whether you’re extending an existing slab or building a detached unit from grade up. We stock Belgard-compatible hardscape components for Coastal, Dublin, and Weston wall series, and we can match most discontinued color blends from our supplier archive. Most Fort Lauderdale ADU projects using Belgard hit permitting in 4-6 weeks and break ground shortly after.

Call (754) 254-7676

Homeowners usually discover the problem when a Belgard retaining wall starts weeping water through the face units after heavy rain, or when the cap row settles enough to crack the mortar bed beneath an addition’s door threshold. In Fort Lauderdale’s coral-rock substrate, what looks like a paver failure is often a drainage layer failure behind the wall, and the fix isn’t always where the symptom shows.

Which Belgard Models This Applies To

Belgard’s retaining wall and paver lines aren’t interchangeable by thickness alone. The Belgard Weston Stone, used frequently for Fort Lauderdale ADU perimeter walls and planter integration, ships in 4-inch and 6-inch heights with a specific rear-lip connection that won’t seat properly if you substitute a competing manufacturer’s equivalent. The Dublin Cobble paver, common for addition patio tie-ins, has a 2 3/8-inch thickness that matches standard concrete slab elevations but requires a 1-inch bedding sand layer over compacted limerock, not the 3/4-inch some crews assume.

To identify your exact Belgard unit, check the back face for the molded “B” logo and a two-digit date code. The color name is usually stamped on the pallet wrap, not the unit itself. If your addition or ADU was built between 2015 and 2022, you may have Belgard’s Arbel or Mega-Arbel paver in the “Bella” or “Sable” colorway, both of which were discontinued in 2023. We maintain a cross-reference to Techo-Bloc and Pavestone equivalents that match within a shade, and we stock sample boards for side-by-side comparison before you commit.

Rowan Construction Group Fort Lauderdale is an independent contractor, not affiliated with Belgard Corporation. We source through authorized distributors and can order factory-direct for specialty blends with a 3-4 week lead time.

Signs Your Belgard Home Additions & ADU Is Failing

• Cap stones rocking or separating from the wall face. This usually means the adhesive bed has sheared, often because the wall core settled unevenly. In Fort Lauderdale’s sandy soils near the Intracoastal, we’ve seen this where the footer wasn’t stepped to account for a gradual grade change.
• White efflorescence blooming on the paver or wall face. That’s calcium hydroxide migrating to the surface, harmless structurally but a sign that water is moving through the unit instead of draining behind it. On ADU perimeter walls, it often traces back to a missing or clogged weep hole at the base course.
• Paver surface spalling or flaking in the traffic pattern. Belgard’s hard-fired units resist this, but if you see it, the batch may have been over-saturated during installation or sealed too early, trapping moisture. Fort Lauderdale’s afternoon thunderstorms make timing critical.
• Wall leaning outward, especially at the cap line. The geogrid reinforcement layers may have been omitted or cut short during original construction, or the backfill wasn’t compacted in lifts. This is structural, not cosmetic, and it won’t self-correct.
• Standing water on the paver surface 30 minutes after rain. The bedding sand layer has likely washed out or the pitch reversed slightly. On addition patios tied to existing slabs, this is common where the original concrete heaved and the paver overlay followed it.

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Replacement Cost & What’s Included

For a Belgard home addition or ADU project in Fort Lauderdale, expect $45,000-$130,000 for the full scope, including demolition of failed hardscape, regraded drainage, new base preparation, and reinstallation with matching or compatible units. A partial wall rebuild, say 20 linear feet of Weston Stone with proper drainage correction behind it, typically runs $8,500-$18,000. Paver patio relay for a 400-square-foot addition footprint lands around $6,000-$14,000 if the base is salvageable, $12,000-$22,000 if we have to recompact and regrade.

Every quote is flat-priced and written before work starts. Under Clause 1 of The Haven Standard, the number you sign is the number you pay, and no change proceeds without a signed change order. Our price includes the Belgard material (or matched equivalent), delivery, installation labor, bedding and joint sand, and a 365-Day Done Right Promise on the workmanship. We pull permits when the scope requires it, and every visit generates a documented photo record you receive by text or email.

DIY or Call Us?

There’s safe reconnaissance, and then there’s work that needs a crew. You can check whether the wall cap lifts freely by hand, photograph the date codes on your Belgard units, and verify whether water is pooling at the wall base or draining through it. Those observations help us scope the job before we arrive.

What we don’t recommend: disassembling a retaining wall course by course without understanding the dead load above it, cutting into a Belgard wall that may be acting as a property-line retaining structure, or attempting to recompact base material under an existing paver field. Fort Lauderdale’s high water table means many ADU walls are holding back saturated soil that weighs significantly more than dry fill. The wall can shift fast once you disturb the interlock. We carry the compaction equipment, geogrid, and drainage components on our trucks, and we’ll put the repair scope in writing before anyone picks up a tool. Call (754) 254-7676 to schedule your free estimate.

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