Crack Filling & Pothole Repair

Why cracks matter more than they look

A crack is not a cosmetic problem. It's an opening straight through the surface into the stone base underneath. Water gets in, softens the base, freezes and expands, and the crack widens. What started as a hairline becomes a spiderweb, then a soft spot, then a hole. The repair bill roughly multiplies at each stage.

Sealing a crack for a few dollars a foot is the cheapest work in this entire trade. Waiting until it's a pothole is the most expensive.

Crack sealing, step by step

• Rout or clean. Wider cracks are routed to a consistent reservoir; all cracks are blown clean of dirt, sand and vegetation.
• Dry and heat. Sealant does not bond to wet or cold asphalt. We work the weather window, not the calendar.
• Hot-pour rubberized sealant. It stays flexible and moves with the pavement through freeze–thaw instead of cracking back open.
• Squeegee flush. Neat band, no ridges to catch a snow plow or a shopping cart.

Cold-pour caulk out of a tube has its place on a small driveway, but it shrinks and pulls away. On anything with traffic, hot-pour is the material that lasts.

Pothole and patch repair

The reason most patches fail is that somebody shoveled cold mix into a wet, ragged hole and drove over it. That's a temporary plug, not a repair.

• Saw-cut square. Cut back to sound pavement on clean vertical edges — a patch needs a shoulder to lock against.
• Excavate the failure. Remove the loose material and, where the base is the problem, the base too.
• Tack the edges. Asphalt emulsion so the new material actually bonds to the old.
• Hot mix, compacted in lifts. Rolled to density and flush to grade, so water runs across it instead of sitting in it.

Infrared and full-depth options

For larger failed areas we'll quote infrared repair (reheating and reworking the existing asphalt into a seamless patch) or full-depth removal and replacement, depending on whether the surface or the base is what failed. On the quote we tell you which one it is and why.