Crack filling, pothole repair, broken edges and failed sections cut out and rebuilt, across Denver and the surrounding counties. Most driveways that look finished are not. They have a handful of spots where water is getting in, and those spots decide whether the rest of the drive lasts another ten years or another two.
Cold patch from the hardware store is asphalt that stays workable in the bag, and it is fine for what it is: a temporary plug so nobody turns an ankle until the weather allows a real repair. It sits in the hole rather than bonding to it, it never compacts as hard as hot mix, and it does nothing about why the hole formed. Most cold patches are loose again within a season or two.
A lasting patch starts with a saw. The failed area is cut back to sound asphalt in a square or rectangle, the broken material comes out, and the base underneath is dug out and replaced with compacted road base if it is soft. Hot asphalt goes back in and is rolled, and the seam around it is sealed so water cannot run down the joint between old and new. Done that way, the patch is effectively a small piece of new driveway.
Small patches are inside the one price per square foot when the drive is being sealed. Bigger areas, or repairs on their own, are priced as a job.
Winter here is not one long freeze. Snow falls, the sun comes out, and by afternoon the drive is wet with melt that runs straight into any open crack. After dark the clear sky lets the heat escape and the water freezes where it lies, prying the crack a little wider. The next sunny day it happens again. Those repeated crossings of freezing do more to an open crack than a steady cold spell would.
Meanwhile the water that gets past the surface reaches the base and the soil under it, and in clay that means swelling. A crack filled in autumn keeps that water out for the whole winter. The same crack left open usually reaches spring as a broken edge or the start of a pothole.
A lot fails where the loads are heaviest and most repeated: the entry apron, the main drive aisle, the turn in front of the loading door, and the pad where the trash truck sets its front forks down. Those get cut out and rebuilt first. The whole surface is then sealed and the existing layout restriped, so old and new wear as one surface. For a property manager or a board, the repair list sits on the same written sheet as the sealing. See parking lot sealcoating and HOAs and property managers.
Crack filling and small patches come inside the one price per square foot for a sealing job. A stand-alone repair, or an area large enough to need cutting out and rebuilding, is priced per job once somebody has looked at it, because the size of the area, how deep the failure goes and what the soil is doing all change the work. You get a single written number before anything starts.
Will I see where it was patched? For a while. Fresh asphalt is darker and tighter than a drive that has had years of sun at this altitude. A coat of sealer over the whole drive after the repair is what pulls it back into one colour.
Can repairs be done in the colder months? Crack filling can go on later in the year than sealer can, as long as the cracks are clean and dry. Hot asphalt patches need dry ground and a warm enough day to compact. A repair done before the first hard freeze spares the drive a winter of widening.
My drive lifted near the lawn. Will a patch fix it? Only if the water feeding the soil is dealt with too. Otherwise the new patch rises with the old asphalt.
Can you fix just the apron? Yes. If it sits in the city right-of-way, the permit is on the quote.
Send the address through the form, with a photo if you have one. You will be told what you are looking at, whether a repair and a seal will carry the drive for years or whether it has gone past that, and what it costs. Repairs are carried out by local independent contractors.
