Clay cracks, broken edges, heaved sections, potholes and soft spots repaired across Fort Worth and the counties around it. Most asphalt that looks ready for replacement has a few places that have failed and a lot that has not, and fixing the few is what keeps the rest.
When damage covers a large part of the drive, one repair after another costs more than an overlay or a rebuild, and you will be told that. See asphalt driveway paving.
Bagged cold patch is a stopgap. It does not bond to the old asphalt, it pushes out of the hole in summer heat, and nothing has been done about the cause. A proper repair cuts the failed area back to sound asphalt with straight edges, digs out the broken material, rebuilds the base if the base was the problem, and fills it with hot asphalt compacted in layers. The seams are sealed so water cannot follow them down into the clay.
Clay cracks get a different honest answer. They are cleaned out and filled with hot filler, which stays flexible, and filling them keeps rain out of the soil beneath. But the ground will keep moving, so some of those cracks will open again in a hard drought year. Refilling them every couple of years is maintenance, not failure.
Small patches before a seal coat are included in the sealing price. Larger areas, or repairs without sealing, are priced as their own job.
Freezing is not what breaks asphalt here. The cycle is dry and wet. Through a hot, dry summer the clay under the drive shrinks and the cracks open. When the rain comes back, it runs straight down those open cracks into the soil, which swells unevenly, lifting one part of the drive against another. Each round makes the cracks wider and the base weaker, and a crack that could hold a coin in June can be a broken edge by the next spring.
Filling cracks and fixing the failed spots before the wet months keeps the water out of the ground under the drive. It is the cheapest thing that can be done for asphalt in this part of Texas.
On a lot, the failures gather where heavy wheels turn: the entrance, the drive lanes, the dumpster pad, the fire lane in front of the building. Those get repaired first, then the whole lot is sealed and restriped so the patches and the rest of the surface wear together. For a manager or a board, the repair list goes on the same sheet as the sealing, one plan and one number. See parking lot sealcoating and HOAs and property managers.
A sealing job has one price per square foot, and it includes crack filling and small patches. A standalone repair, or a larger area that has to be cut out and rebuilt, is priced per job once it has been seen, because size, depth and the state of the base all change the work. You get one written number before anything starts.
Will the cracks come back? Ordinary cracks, once filled and sealed, stay closed for years. Cracks caused by clay moving can reopen in a severe drought; they are refilled as part of regular maintenance.
Can repairs be done in the summer? Yes. Hot asphalt handles heat well. Summer work starts early in the day, and a day with rain moves.
Our drive meets a concrete approach and there is a gap. Can you fill it? Yes. The joint between asphalt and concrete opens as the two move differently, and it is cleaned and filled like any other crack.
Do you fix concrete driveways? No. We work on asphalt only.
Does the Texas heat hurt asphalt? Heat on its own softens it for a while and it hardens again. What ages it is the sun: years of strong UV dry out the binder, the surface grays and turns brittle, and brittle asphalt cracks. A seal coat every few years is what shields it.
Send the address through the form, and a photo of the damage if you can. You will hear what it is, whether a repair and a seal coat will carry it or whether it has gone past that, and what it costs. Repairs are done by local independent contractors.
