Henrico County wraps around the city from Short Pump in the west to Varina in the east, and it does something almost no other Virginia county does: it looks after its own roads. That one fact shapes who signs off on driveway entrances here, and it is where this page starts.
When the Byrd Act of 1932 moved county roads across Virginia to the state, a few counties kept theirs. Today only Arlington and Henrico still operate and maintain their own local road systems. Across the county line in Chesterfield or Hanover, the state highway department owns most roads and issues most entrance permits. In Henrico, a residential street belongs to the county.
So on a county street, work at the entrance goes to Henrico's Department of Public Works. Where a drive joins a road the state still maintains, the rules can differ, and we check which road your entrance meets before quoting any work there.
From the county code and the Public Works pages:
Henrico also requires a business license before a company operates in the county, with contractors filing a workers' compensation certificate and a state license number or an affidavit. Entrance work here is booked only with a paving contractor who holds what the county requires; sealing and crack filling that stay on your lot involve no permit.
Short Pump, Glen Allen, Tuckahoe and the West End; Lakeside and Laurel to the north; Highland Springs, Sandston and Varina to the east. The county covers about 245 square miles and more than 330,000 people, bordered by the city, Goochland, Hanover, New Kent, Charles City and, across the James, Chesterfield. Interstates 95 and 64 cross it, and we work anywhere between them and the county line.
The official Richmond weather records come from Richmond International Airport, which is in Henrico near Sandston. The National Weather Service's 1991 to 2020 normals there give about 45.5 inches of rain a year spread over roughly 119 days with measurable precipitation, just under nine inches of snow in an average winter, and a normal January low a little below 29 degrees.
Read those numbers together and they describe a hard climate for asphalt: rain on about one day in three, and a winter whose typical night drops just below freezing and whose days climb back above it. Water gets into cracks often, and freezes in them often, without the snow cover that would keep a surface at a steady temperature. That is the case for filling cracks before winter rather than after it.
The fall line that runs through Richmond also runs through the county. The West End sits on the Piedmont side, over harder rock, with rolling lots and drives that climb to the house. The East End toward Varina and Sandston is Coastal Plain, flatter and built on softer layers of sand, gravel and clay. On flat ground a drive has little fall, so dips hold water after a storm and the edges stay wet; on rolling ground runoff concentrates and scours the low end. We look for each on a quote, because sealer does not change the shape of a drive and a spot that holds water may need a patch or regrading first.
On a county street, no. The county issues it through Public Works. If your drive joins a road the state maintains, that can change, and we check first.
The inspection fee schedule in the county code lists fees for commercial entrances, curb and sidewalk, and none for a residential entrance. Any bond the director requires is separate.
A little. Runoff speeds up on a slope and wears the low end and the edges, so those get checked for loose material first, and the coat is applied so it stays put while it sets rather than drifting downhill.
Where the property sits, not the mailing address. Plenty of Henrico homes have a Richmond address; see the City of Richmond page for how to tell.
Next door: Hanover County to the north and Chesterfield County across the river.
