LESLIE: Jim in North Carolina has a question about his driveway that’s cracking up. What’s going on?
JIM: Yeah, we lived in this house about seven years. When we moved in, had a large expanse of driveway without any expansion joints. And I complained about that when they first built the house and they came in and they cut a couple of lines in there, of course.
TOM: They said, “Oh, we forgot. Sorry.” We’ll saw a couple in for you just to make you feel better.
JIM: Yeah, right. But they weren’t very deep and the driveway cracked in a number of places.
TOM: Lo and behold, you were right.
JIM: Right, I was absolutely correct.
TOM: OK.
JIM: And so I rented a concrete cutter and I cut right through the concrete in about six places.
TOM: OK.
JIM: But the cracks were still there, of course.
TOM: Right, of course.
JIM: Now I guess I’m looking for a way to address the cracks because the settling …
TOM: Let me suggest a line of products that are made by a company called Abatron – A-b-a-t-r-o-n. This is some of the toughest stuff that I’ve ever run across for dealing with all sorts of concrete issues. Very industrial-looking website but you can order the product and it does a really good job. The website is Abatron.com. They have patching compounds, they have joint fillers and you’re going to get a supply of this stuff and keep chasing these cracks; try to get them to slow down. At this point, it’s a maintenance issue. It sounds to me like this driveway was never installed correctly in the first place. They obviously didn’t put the expansion joints in. They probably didn’t pitch it right. And so, once it started to crack it’s just going to continue and lord knows, they may not have even compacted the soil underneath. So at this point, all you’re doing is maintaining what you have. You’re not going to be able to improve it. But I would use some of those products from Abatron to try to do just that.
JIM: OK. That sounds good. I will give that a try.
TOM: Jim, thanks so much for calling us at 888-MONEY-PIT.
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