Asphalt repair for Richmond area driveways and lots: potholes, sunken spots, root damage, washed-out edges and cracks. Most damaged drives can be saved. The work is finding out what caused each bad spot and fixing that, rather than filling the symptom and watching it come back.
Water in the base. The most common one. Heavy summer storms push water through any open crack, and in clay ground it stays there. The asphalt above softens, sags, and breaks into a pattern of small linked cracks, often with a shallow dip. It has to be cut out and rebuilt on new stone, and the water given a way off the drive.
Weight in one place. A heavy truck parked in the same spot, a dumpster during a renovation, a trailer turning at the end of the drive. The surface ruts or shoves into ripples. A thicker patch there, built on a proper base, usually cures it.
Roots. Richmond is a city of big trees, and their roots lift and split drives from below, usually in a raised ridge with cracks running off it. The section can be taken out and rebuilt, but whether a root may be cut is a job for an arborist first.
Edges with no support. A drive laid to the lawn line with nothing to hold its side breaks off in pieces, faster on sandy ground where storm runoff undercuts it. The edge is cut back to solid asphalt and rebuilt, and runoff is steered away from it.
Sun and age. Years of UV turn asphalt brittle and grey, and it starts to crack in long lines and lose stone from the surface. That is not a patching problem; it is a crack filling and sealing problem, and it is the cheapest one to fix. On a sealcoating job, filling those cracks is included in the price.
Bagged cold patch has its place: a quick fill so nobody turns an ankle while a real repair is arranged. It sits in the hole loosely, does not bond to the sides, and leaves the cause underneath untouched, so it tends to be gone by the next season.
A proper repair starts with a saw, not a shovel. The damaged area is squared off back to firm asphalt, the broken material is taken out, and if the base or the soil below was the problem that is dug out and replaced with compacted stone. Hot mix goes back in layers, each compacted, level with the surface around it, and the edges are sealed so rain cannot run down the joint. It is new driveway in miniature, and it should last as long as the drive around it.
Small patches done with a sealcoat are part of the sealing price. Larger areas, or repairs on their own, are quoted separately.
Richmond does not get the long hard freezes of places further north. What it gets is a winter that crosses the freezing mark over and over, with rain or a little snow in between. Water that runs into a crack on a wet afternoon freezes overnight, expands, and levers the crack open a bit more; the next thaw lets more water in. Then summer brings the opposite stress, heat that softens the asphalt and storms that flood any low spot.
That combination is why a crack left open for a year so often becomes a pothole, and why repairing it now costs so much less than repairing what it turns into. Patches can go in later in the year than sealer, but they still need a dry surface and temperatures above freezing to bond.
On a lot, the damage follows the heavy vehicles: the entrance, the delivery route, the dumpster pad, the main aisle. Those areas are rebuilt first, and then the whole surface is sealed and restriped so repairs and old surface wear together. For a townhouse community or a property manager, the repairs go on the same written sheet as the sealing, one plan and one total. More on parking lot sealcoating and striping.
A sealcoating job is one price per square foot, and it includes crack filling, small patches and restriping. A repair booked on its own, or a large section that has to be cut out and rebuilt, is priced per job after it has been seen, because it depends on the area, how deep the damage goes and what the base needs. The figure is written down before any work starts.
Can you repair just the entrance? Yes. It often fails first because it takes the turning traffic and the runoff from the road. If it is in the right-of-way, the permit goes on the quote.
Will the patches be obvious? For a while. New hot mix is darker and tighter than aged asphalt, which is why repairs are usually followed by a sealcoat that brings the whole drive back to one colour.
A utility company cut a trench across my drive. Can that be fixed? Yes. A trench that has settled or cracked along its edges is repaired the same way as any other failed area, and sealing afterwards blends it in.
How long will a repair last? A cut-out repair on a proper base should last as long as the drive around it, provided its seams are kept closed with crack filling and sealer.
Send the address through the form, and a photo if you have one. You will hear what is causing the damage, whether repairs and a sealcoat will carry the drive, and what it costs. Repairs are done by local independent contractors.
