Chesterfield County fills the land between the James and the Appomattox, from Bon Air and Midlothian down to Chester and Ettrick. Most of its homes were built within a few decades of each other, and most of its roads belong to the state. Both facts matter for your driveway.
Midlothian, Bon Air, Brandermill, Chesterfield Court House, Chester, Ettrick, Matoaca, Moseley and Winterpock, and the subdivisions between them. If your address is in the county and the community is not listed, send it anyway.
Census counts put Chesterfield at about 40,400 people in 1950 and 209,274 by 1990. Brandermill, around the Swift Creek Reservoir, was the county's first planned community, approved in 1974 and built from 1975, and many more followed. Growth that fast means whole neighbourhoods of driveways were paved in the same few years, on the same specifications, by the same handful of builders.
Driveways of a common age fail in common ways. Look along a street built in one phase and you tend to see the same crack where every drive meets its garage slab, the same broken edge where every drive meets the road, and the same grey, stone-shedding surface on drives that have gone years without a coat. Most of those drives are well past their first life. Many can still be saved with crack filling, patching and sealer; the ones whose base has given way need resurfacing or rebuilding, and the quote says which is which.
The county itself notes that many residents do not realise the Virginia Department of Transportation manages the roads in Chesterfield, and has done since the Byrd Act of 1932. So the stretch where your drive meets a public road falls under VDOT's rules, not a county office's.
Under the state's rules, anyone working in right-of-way VDOT controls needs a land use permit first. For a driveway entrance serving no more than two homes, that is the private entrance permit, and it is the property owner who obtains it. The application comes with a $100 processing fee, and VDOT sets a surety based on the estimated cost of the work in the right-of-way, returned after inspection. Applications go online through VDOT's permit system or to the Chesterfield Residency office in Midlothian, which serves Chesterfield, Amelia and Powhatan.
State rules also say the owner maintains the private entrance, apart from certain parts VDOT keeps, such as the shoulder, any pipe under the entrance, curb and gutter, and sidewalk. Where a drive crosses a roadside ditch over a pipe and that pipe is crushed or blocked, raise it with VDOT rather than having it paved over.
Because the road and its shoulder are VDOT's, a sealing job here stops at the edge of the road pavement, on a clean line, and does not spill onto the state's surface or shoulder. On a drive without a curb that edge can be ragged, with the old asphalt feathered out into the gravel shoulder. We trim back to firm material and seal to there. If the last foot or two of your drive has broken up where it meets the road, that is entrance work, and it is quoted separately with the permit question answered in writing, rather than quietly patched with whatever is left in the kettle at the end of the day.
Chesterfield requires a business license for businesses located in the county and asks contractors to file, each year, a workers' compensation certification and either a state contractor's license or an affidavit. Entrance work is only booked with a paving contractor who can obtain the VDOT permit for it. Sealing and crack filling on your side of the road edge involve no permit.
Much of the county is still wooded. Pocahontas State Park alone covers 7,919 acres about twenty miles from Richmond, with the 225 acre Swift Creek Lake inside it, and plenty of subdivisions were cut out of forest with the trees left standing. A drive under tall trees stays damp after rain, collects needles and leaves that hold moisture against the asphalt, and grows moss along its edges. Roots lift sections from below. Before sealing, those drives need clearing back to bare asphalt and edging, and a shaded coat takes longer to cure, which the schedule allows for.
Driveway sealcoating with crack filling and small patches in the one price per square foot; repairs to broken entrances, root damage and sunken spots; paving and resurfacing for drives past saving; and lots and community streets through the property manager process.
For the part in the right-of-way, VDOT, through the Chesterfield Residency. The county does not issue entrance permits on state roads.
No. Asphalt and concrete move differently with temperature, so that joint opens on almost every drive. It is filled and sealed with the rest. If the asphalt has dropped below the slab, it needs a patch.
No. We cover the whole county down to the Appomattox.
Across the river: the City of Richmond and Henrico County.
