The forecast for Sunday, August 2, said 82 degrees, full sun and no rain until Tuesday afternoon. I'd been waiting two weeks for a forecast like that, and when it showed up I moved the driveway to the top of the list.
Why bother in August
Our driveway is a single lane of asphalt about 70 feet long, running along the side of the house to the garage. Every winter it takes the snowblower, the plow windrow at the street and a few dozen freeze-thaw cycles. Water gets into a crack, freezes, expands and pushes the edges apart, and by spring a hairline has a crumbling lip. In April I found a chunk missing near the street and the long crack by the garage apron a good bit wider than I remembered.
I walked the drive with a piece of chalk and circled every crack I thought was worth filling. There were 23 of them, from hairlines to one I could lay a pencil in. Crack filler wants warm, dry days to cure, which makes August the lead time for January. Wait until October and you're betting on the weather.
Cleaning took longer than filling
Most of the work happened Saturday evening. I pulled the grass out of the cracks with a long screwdriver, scrubbed the edges with a wire brush and blew everything out with the EGO leaf blower. Any crack wider than about half an inch got foam backer rod pushed down into it, so the filler would sit near the surface instead of disappearing into the base.
Both vehicles had to come off the driveway for the night, so they went out on the street. Tessa moved her Civic once and announced that it was staying there until everything was dry, however long that took.
Sunday morning I blew the cracks out again and started pouring. The pourable rubberized filler comes in jugs with a nozzle, and I ran each crack slightly under full, then dragged a squeegee across to strike it flush. Flush matters here, because a raised bead is exactly what the snowblower's scraper bar catches all winter. The one crack too wide for pourable filler got a cartridge of asphalt patch, tamped down with the end of a 2x4.
My mistake was on that long crack by the garage apron. It had dirt packed deep inside, so I hosed it out, and then I got impatient and filled it before it had dried. On Monday evening I could peel up a three-foot section of filler like a rubber band. I dug it out, let the crack dry properly this time and redid it. The rest held.
The time split surprised me. Cleaning on Saturday took a little over three hours, most of it on my knees with the screwdriver. Pouring on Sunday took about seventy minutes, and the squeegee was the only part that felt like progress. Gary came by around the halfway mark, looked down the length of the drive and said the previous owners used to do this every other summer, which explains why the cracks were as small as they were. It's on the calendar for two summers from now, so it doesn't turn into every fifth one.
What filler can't fix
Near the garage apron there's a patch of alligator cracking, a web of small cracks over a soft spot, and filler won't do much for that. It's a base problem, and someday it'll be a job for a paving company with a saw and a truck. The broken corner near the street got the last of the asphalt patch, packed in and tamped flat, which will do until the plow finds it again. I also decided against sealcoating this year. I read enough opposing opinions on sealcoat for a residential drive that I've parked the question until I can ask someone who does driveways for a living.
Here's the $68:
- Three jugs of pourable crack filler: $48
- One cartridge of asphalt patch: $9
- A roll of foam backer rod: $7
- A wire brush: $4
The squeegee was already in the garage, and so was the long screwdriver, which came with the house and may be as old as it is. The filler has the rest of August and all of September to firm up. After that, the city plow can push whatever it likes into the end of the driveway.
