Paver sealingin Boca Raton, FL.

The club communities built from the late 1980s, Woodfield's 20 villages and Broken Sound's 27, are where Boca's motor courts and circular drives are most common, often in travertine or tumbled pavers. Travertine is a natural stone full of small voids, and it drinks in anything left sitting on it: a wet planter, a leaf, a drip from a car.

It gets a sealer made for natural stone, not a concrete-paver product, and the joints are handled carefully because travertine edges chip more easily than a concrete paver. Voids that have filled with dirt are cleaned out in the wash. Most owners pick a natural finish so the stone still looks like stone. Check your village's rules on driveway appearance before choosing, and plan for the drive to be off limits to cars while the sealer cures.

Boca's IRIS system has supplied reclaimed irrigation since the early 1990s to about 1,600 customers, among them Woodfield, Broken Sound, Royal Palm Yacht & Country Club and the Boca Raton Resort, and residential lawns are part of it. Reclaimed water is treated for irrigation but still carries dissolved minerals and some nutrients.

On light travertine and pavers, overspray leaves mineral spotting and a green or dark fan where the heads land most. The clean lifts it, and the sealer keeps the next round near the surface where a rinse reaches it. Sealing does not stop the water landing, so re-aiming the heads onto the lawn is still the best fix. On a big motor court, that can mean several heads.

On the Intracoastal lots in Royal Palm Yacht & Country Club and the east side of Camino Gardens, pool decks and patios often run toward a dock, and they take salt every day. Unsealed pavers and travertine soak it in, and as it dries it can leave a white bloom.

The deck is cleaned with the rinse kept away from the water, salt bloom cleared, joints blown out and refilled with polymeric sand, and the sealer applied once the surface is dry. Set sand stays in the joints instead of washing toward the seawall in a storm. A fresh-water rinse now and then keeps a sealed waterfront deck looking right between seals. Most owners on the water choose a natural finish, since a wet look glares off the Intracoastal.