LESLIE: Always love taking calls from my neck of the woods. We’ve got Scott in New York who’s working on the driveway. Tell us what’s going on.
SCOTT: At my house, in my driveway, I have a blacktop driveway. I notice sitting water spots after a rainstorm. I was wondering what my options were for a fix.
TOM: So, are these actual potholes or just sort of low spots?
SCOTT: Just low spots.
TOM: I’ve got to tell you, it’s difficult to address a situation where you just have low spots like that, because it’s a failure of the base of the driveway. When the driveway was put in, the base of the driveway underneath, you know, probably wasn’t prepped correctly. And so, over time, it’s settled and sagged. And that’s why you’re developing those water spots now.
It’s difficult to patch over that unless it’s a fairly contained area. So, for example, if you had a section of broken-up driveway that maybe was a foot or so square, there are different densities of patching compounds. They come everywhere from like a gravel mix, that is a latex product that you could put in and will dry solid, to something that’s fairly liquid for cracks.
But to really raise the level of low spots in there, you’re really talking about a situation where you’d have to replace the driveway or put a second layer on it. And I’ve got to tell you, I probably would not even put the second layer on it, because I would not be confident as to how the original driveway was constructed. And if I wanted to avoid that in the future, I would probably just tear it up and start again.
So, I guess your question is: how much does this really bother you? Does it bother you enough where you want to tear it up or you just want to live with it for a few more years before you get to that? If it’s not cracked, perhaps just sealing the driveway is going to protect it as long as possible. Keeping that water from saturating into that area and soaking into that area will help stabilize it for the – at least for the immediate future.
SCOTT: OK. Thanks for your help.
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