Failed sections cut out and rebuilt so the repair is flush and permanent, rather than shovelled full of cold patch and left to come apart by spring.
A pothole is what you see after the base under the pavement has already failed. Water got through a crack or an open surface, saturated the aggregate underneath, and froze. The pavement above lost its support, traffic flexed it, and a piece broke away.
That matters because it tells you what a real repair has to do. Filling the visible hole with material and tamping it down addresses the part you can see while leaving the saturated, unsupported base exactly as it was. Which is why cold patch out of a bag reliably reappears as a hole in the same spot the following spring, usually slightly larger.
A proper repair removes the failed pavement, gets down to whether the base is sound, compacts or replaces base material where it is not, and rebuilds the section so it is tied into the pavement around it and finished flush.
The failed area gets cut back to sound pavement with straight edges. Square edges matter more than they look like they should: a patch feathered into a ragged hole has thin edges that break away immediately, whereas a patch with clean vertical walls has full-depth material all the way to its perimeter.
The failed material comes out. The base gets inspected and compacted, and where it is contaminated or saturated it gets removed and replaced rather than built on top of. Skipping this is the difference between a repair that lasts years and one that lasts months.
New asphalt goes in and gets compacted properly, in lifts if the depth calls for it. The finished patch sits flush with the surrounding surface, because a proud patch catches a plough blade and a sunken one collects the water that started the problem.
Repairs happen before sealcoating, without exception, and the reason is simple enough to check yourself: sealer is a coating a few sheets of paper thick, and it cannot bridge a hole or add strength to a soft spot.
Coating a driveway with unrepaired damage produces something that looks excellent for a few months and then fails in exactly the places it was always going to fail, except now you have paid for a seal on top of it. That sequence is why the trade has the reputation it has in some neighbourhoods.
So a quote will separate the repair work from the coating work, and sometimes the recommendation will be to do repairs this year and seal next year once they have settled. See crack filling for the maintenance that prevents most of this in the first place.
There is a point where patching stops making financial sense, and you should hear about it plainly.
As a rough guide, when failed and alligatored areas cover a large share of the total surface, you are patching a driveway rather than repairing one, and the sum of the patches approaches the cost of doing it properly. At that stage the money goes further on resurfacing or replacement, and the patchwork result will never look or perform like pavement.
We will tell you when you have crossed that line. Selling a large patching job on a driveway that needs replacing is an easy sale and a bad one, and it is exactly the thing that makes people distrust this trade.
It depends on the area, the depth, and whether the base underneath needs replacing, which is not always knowable until the failed material is out. Quotes state what is assumed about the base and what happens to the price if it turns out worse than it looks, so there are no surprises mid-job.
We can, and occasionally it is the right call as a temporary measure to get through a season before real work happens. What we will not do is sell cold patch as a repair, because it is a stopgap and it will be back.
Not exactly, and no honest contractor will tell you otherwise. New asphalt is darker than weathered asphalt and takes a season or two to blend. Sealcoating over the finished repair is what makes the surface read as one colour, which is another reason repairs come before coating.
Usually the same day once it has cooled and been compacted, which is faster than sealcoating. Avoid parking in the same spot or turning the wheels on it for the first few days while it fully hardens.
Sealer needs pavement above about 50 degrees and rising, no rain for roughly 24 hours on either side, and daylight to cure in. In Northwest Ohio that puts the season between late April and roughly mid-October. After that, cold nights and heavy morning dew stop it curing properly. Anyone offering to seal in November is selling a coat that will peel.
Twenty four hours, and forty eight is better if the weather is cool or damp. Foot traffic is usually fine before vehicle traffic. The one thing to avoid for the first few days is turning your wheels while sitting still, because power steering scuffs fresh sealer.
We are setting up general liability cover as part of forming the business, and no commercial work gets booked before it is in place. Ask us where that stands when you call and you will get a straight answer rather than a brochure line.
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