Hot-Pour Crack Filling in Colorado Springs, CO

Crack filling means cleaning out cracks in asphalt and filling them with a flexible rubberized sealant, and around Colorado Springs it is the repair that does the most to keep water away from the clay and shale under a driveway. Open cracks send snowmelt and storm water straight into the base. At the airport, December through February alone brings about 69 days when the pavement freezes and thaws, and water in a crack expands each time it freezes. On the Razor and Midway clay loams mapped around El Paso County, which take in water slowly and hold it, that moisture can also swell the subgrade. Careful crack repair in the fall does more for a drive than a coat of sealer laid over open gaps. Per-foot rates are on the cost page.

Hot-pour filler is melted in a kettle and poured or wanded into the crack, then leveled flush or banded slightly over the edges. Once it cools it stays rubbery, which matters where the normal gap between a day's high and low runs about 27 to 29 degrees from March through October: the crack opens and closes a little every day, and a rigid material would tear loose. Cold-pour fillers from a jug or tube need no kettle and suit a handful of narrow cracks, but they are not built for the movement of a whole winter.

Cleaning decides whether the filler holds. Cracks are blown out with compressed air or dried with a heat lance, weeds and failed old filler come out, and wide or ragged cracks may be routed to a clean channel first. The joint between the driveway and the garage slab, and the one at the concrete apron by the street, move differently from the asphalt around them and are worth filling every year. A street repaved under the city's 2C program adds another joint where fresh asphalt meets an older apron.

Not every crack is a surface crack. Where swelling clay or dipping shale sits close to the surface, the Colorado Geological Survey lists cracked and heaved driveways among the most common signs, and it describes heaving bedrock that rises in long ridges. A crack along the crest of a hump, a crack that runs beside a sprinkler line at the lawn edge, or one that reopens right after filling points to movement below. Filling still slows the water, but the lasting fix is drainage and, where the base has failed, asphalt patching or replacement.

Fall filling suits this climate. Asphalt contracts in cold weather, so cracks are at their widest in autumn and filler placed in September goes into a fuller channel, ahead of the median first freeze on October 4. Hot-pour needs dry cracks, so the day after one of the storms that make July and August the wettest months is a poor choice. Most crews price by the linear foot with a minimum charge, and HomeGuide puts the range at $0.50 to $3 per foot, with Angi at $1 to $3.