Is Your Driveway Still Salvageable?
Pits, scars, cracks and fissures–our asphalt drive could have posed as a movie prop of trench warfare or the aftermath of a meteor bombardment. Gray and crumbling, it seemed unsalvageable. And this is what I feared any reputable paving specialist would inform me. For a 500-square-foot drive that can comfortably hold two cars, I was looking at a price tag of $2500 for an overhaul using asphalt, $3500 if I wanted concrete.
As a brand-new homeowner, I hadn’t realized I needed to resurface it from time to time. Nine years later, I realized: the time is now! The main clue was our kids. In bare feet, they tiptoed across it as though navigating a minefield, their treks echoing with cries of pain. In short order, they learned to go the long way around or wear sandals.
Short of cash for any home improvement beyond changing a light bulb or tightening a handrail, I decided to tackle the drive on my own. I sought the advice of a friend, a true handyman. His recommendation: for a driveway as bad as ours, skip the crack filler. Use silica sand instead.
Ah, so this was the magic ingredient that would smooth out the drive. I stopped by a few hardware stores, only to get various forms of “Sorry, it’s not something we carry.” Based on my research, silica sand is a commercial grade of quartz sand available mainly to builders and contractors. It’s out there, but it takes some detective work to find it. Plus, it’s pricey. Impatient, I went with the next best thing: 5 bags of coarse, gray, dry sand that seeped into all of the cracks with enough left over to cover the drive.
This turned out to be a terrible mistake–leaving so much sand on the surface, that is. With my first bucket of latex-based sealant, the sand began clumping and piling up with every swipe of the squeegee. Needless to say, I didn’t open any more buckets that day. I decided the solution was to get rid of all of the sand, which took all of the next morning using a stiff-bristled broom and a leaf blower. After that, the sealant went on easy as pie filling.
It took two full coats–seven buckets in all–to turn the drive into a “smooth lumpishness,” as my wife describes it. On the plus side, from a distance its black polish looks as convincing as a newly shined shoe and our kids can not only walk on it barefoot without injury but draw pictures with chalk, which they couldn’t do before.
It’s supposed to be guaranteed for eight seasons, although at this point, I have much more tar on top than actual asphalt underneath. I’ll be happy if it lasts just two or three. That way, if I start saving now, this will buy time for a brand-new drive, which is what I needed in the first place.
