Driveway crack repair work failed over the winter, how can I make it last

asphaltdriveway

I live in the Northeast, and we have lots of hard winters. My driveway had many cracks with most under ¼ inch in width, but a few larger. So last summer, I cleaned those cracks with jets of water, let them dry and filled them in with patch fillers. Some I got from Home Depot (Latex-ite 1 Gal. 2X Premium Blacktop Crack Filler). I also got a little bucket of trowel patch filler from Walmart for the bigger cracks. Anyway, I applied all these per their instructions early last summer. A couple weeks after that I then sealed my driveway with a product from Home Depot: (4.75-Gal. Ultra Shield Driveway Filler Sealer), again per the product's instructions, and with two coats.

A harsh northeast winter later, I have been dismayed to see most of my cracks are back to their state where they were before I patched anything. A few repairs that were done in the shade seemed to fair better. Yea we had 75” of snow or so that I only used a shovel to clean up with, no salt etc.

Anyway, do you have any recommendations for how I can do this right?

Update, here are some pictures:

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Best Answer

  • Option A: keep doing what you did, and expect it to fail every winter; be pleasantly surprised if it does not some years.
  • Option B: tear up the driveway and put a proper base under it. The lack of a proper base is almost certainly why it self-destructs in winter.

If you can stand the annual work, Option A can be done for MANY years before you begin to touch the price of Option B.

"A proper base" will depend in part on the underlying soil (a good deal of which may need to be removed and replaced with compacted rock and gravel) but is generally a firm, well drained foundation.

If you're really independent-minded there is also Option C: tear up the surface and change to gravel/rocks rather than a hard-surface driveway - takes some annual raking, but immune to cracks for the most part.

Edit, Add: Depending both on the existing grade and soil type, you might get some benefit from digging a French drain (drain pipe under rocks) down both sides of the driveway to help keep water from going under it sideways, and help remove any water that does get into it, at less cost than the full dig up and replace the whole surface. If you have porous soils (sandy, gravelly) this will help a lot, if you have clay it will be of more limited benefit.

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