Asphalt paving
New asphalt built on a base that will hold up, laid by the crew that graded it.
Paving is straightforward when the ground under it was done right, and a recurring expense when it wasn’t. We do both halves of the job — the grading and base as well as the asphalt — because the two decisions that matter most get made before the hot mix arrives.
If you are comparing bids, the number worth asking every contractor is how deep their base is and how they are compacting it. Bids that come in noticeably cheap are usually cheap somewhere you cannot see once the job is finished.
The base is the part that decides how long it lasts
Almost every failed driveway in this county failed underneath. Water gets into a poorly drained base, freezes, lifts the asphalt, and the surface cracks from below. You cannot fix that with a thicker mat. It gets fixed by grading so water leaves, and by compacting the base properly before anything black shows up. That is unglamorous work and it is most of what we are actually selling.