Fix it, or replace it? We will tell you which.

What the damage is telling you

Hairline and single cracks are surface fatigue. Asphalt oxidises and shrinks as it ages, and a driveway that is otherwise sound will develop them from about year seven. Filling them stops water reaching the base, which is the entire point. This is cheap work that buys years.

Alligator cracking — the interconnected pattern that looks like reptile skin — is not a surface problem. It means the base underneath has lost its ability to carry load and the asphalt is flexing over a void. Filling it is cosmetic. That section needs to come out.

Potholes start as a crack that let water in, froze, expanded and blew the asphalt apart from below. A single pothole in an otherwise sound driveway is a patch. Several potholes forming every spring in the same area means the base is holding water.

Sinking or dishing, usually near the garage apron or where the driveway meets the street, means the fill under that section was never compacted properly or has washed out. Surface repair over a sinking area lasts one season.

Crumbling edges happen because asphalt has no lateral support at the perimeter. Vehicles ride the edge, the unsupported material breaks away, and the driveway gets narrower every year. This one is often worth fixing with a paver border course rather than more asphalt.

Interlock problems are different

Pavers rarely fail as a material. What fails is the sand between them or the base under them. Shifting or lipping pavers mean lost joint sand, a failed edge restraint, or a base that has settled — usually all three by the time it is visible.

The repair is to lift the affected area, correct the base, re-lay the same pavers and re-joint with polymeric sand. Because the pavers are reused there is no colour mismatch, which is why interlock ages better than any poured surface.

White powdery staining is efflorescence — mineral salts working out of the concrete. It is not damage and it weathers off within a year or two. Nobody should be selling you a repair for it.

When we will tell you not to repair

If more than roughly a third of the driveway shows alligator cracking, if water pools rather than drains, or if a probe goes through the base with light pressure, patching is throwing money at a surface that will fail again in the same places by the second spring.

We would rather tell you that on the first visit and lose the small job than take $2,000 for work we know will not hold. The repair market runs on the opposite instinct, which is exactly why homeowners in the GTA have stopped trusting quotes.

Questions