Asphalt repair & patching in Utah County
Asphalt repair fixes the failed part of a pavement and leaves the sound part alone: potholes cut out and filled with hot mix, cracks routed and sealed, alligatored sections rebuilt from the base up. Grandview repairs driveways and parking lots across Utah County and Salt Lake County under a B100 general contractor license, and we’ll say when a patch is money well spent and when it’s a bandage.
When repair is the right call, and when it isn’t
Repair makes sense when the damage is local and the base under the rest of the pavement is still doing its job. A pothole or two at the apron, raveling where the plow blade catches, a soft spot the size of a car hood: these are repair jobs. If you can walk the lot and point to the problems, patch them. If the whole surface is the problem, stop pointing.
Alligator cracking across a drive lane, water standing a day after a storm, or pavement that moves underfoot means the base has failed; a patch on top cracks along the same lines within a couple of seasons. That is a replacement conversation: a new asphalt driveway at home, or an asphalt parking lot overlay or reconstruction. If the surface is simply grey, dry, and hairline-cracked with no holes, you need sealcoating, not a saw.
Four repairs, and the one we talk people out of
Full-depth patch. The repair that lasts. We saw-cut a clean rectangle at least a foot past the visible damage, remove the asphalt and any wet or pumping base, recompact or replace the road base, tack the vertical faces, and place hot mix in lifts to match the existing thickness. Potholes and alligatored sections get this treatment.
Crack sealing. Cracks wider than a quarter inch are routed, blown clean, and filled with hot-pour rubberized sealant that stays flexible through winter. Done before sealcoating, it’s the highest-return maintenance an asphalt surface gets.
Skin patch. A thin hot-mix layer feathered over a low or raveled spot with a sound base. Surface wear only; wrong for anything structural.
Edge and apron repair. Aprons, entrances, and gutter edges take the most abuse from turning tires and plow blades. We rebuild those full-depth and, where an edge keeps breaking, add a concrete curb and gutter detail to hold the asphalt in.
The one we don’t sell as permanent: cold-patch throw-and-roll. We’ll do it in January to keep a pothole from eating tires, as a placeholder until hot mix is back.
How a full-depth patch goes in
- Find the real edge. The hole you see is smaller than the failure. We probe outward until the asphalt sounds solid, then mark the cut a foot beyond. Round patches fail at the perimeter; square cuts with vertical faces don’t.
- Cut and remove. Saw-cut, break out, haul. Wet or muddy base is the diagnosis: water got in and freeze–thaw did the rest. Along the Wasatch Front that cycle runs well over a hundred days a year, which is why a March pothole is usually an October crack.
- Fix the base. Dig out soft material, compact new road base in lifts, and confirm the patch still drains the way the lot should. Much of Utah County sits on expansive clay or collapsible bench soils, documented by the Utah Geological Survey; when a patch keeps returning in the same spot, that soil is usually why, and we’ll say so rather than patch it a third time.
- Tack and place. Tack coat on the cut faces so the new asphalt bonds instead of sitting in the hole. Hot mix placed slightly proud, in two lifts over three inches, compacted while hot. A patch rolled cold ravels.
- Seal the seam. The old-to-new joint is the weak line. We seal it, and recommend sealcoating the whole surface the following season so the repair weathers at the same rate.
Hot-mix repairs run roughly April through October here. Summer cloudbursts are the other scheduling factor: we won’t open a cut the afternoon a monsoon cell is forecast, because a cut full of water becomes a base repair you didn’t need.
What asphalt repair costs in Utah County
Ballpark planning numbers, not a quote: full-depth patches typically land around $4 to $8 per square foot of patch area, crack sealing around $1 to $3 per linear foot, skin patches below full-depth work. Small jobs carry a mobilization minimum; the saw, compactor, and hot mix cost the same to bring out for one pothole as for six, so grouping repairs lowers the per-patch price.
What moves the number: how much base comes out, haul-off distance, whether the lot must stay open during work, and whether the repair ties into concrete, drains, or utility covers. We give a budget range after a walk-through and a firm estimate once the cuts are marked.
Questions we actually get
How long does a hot-mix asphalt patch last?
A full-depth patch on a repaired base should last as long as the surrounding pavement, often ten years or more. A skin patch lasts several seasons. Cold patch lasts until spring. The variable is whether the base was fixed and the seam sealed.
Why does the same pothole keep coming back?
Because the repair stopped at the asphalt. Water is still reaching the base from a crack, a low spot, or a failed seam, and each freeze–thaw cycle lifts the patch again. The fix is a wider cut, a base repair, and finding where the water comes from, which sometimes means a drainage correction rather than another patch.
Can you repair asphalt in winter?
Temporarily. Hot-mix plants along the Wasatch Front generally close for the season, so winter repairs use cold patch, which keeps a hole safe but doesn’t bond or compact like hot mix. We’ll place it and schedule the full-depth patch for spring.
Should I crack-seal before or after sealcoating?
Before. Sealcoat is a thin film; it won’t bridge a crack, and it hides cracks you’d rather see. Rout and seal the cracks, let the sealant cure, then sealcoat. In that order, a driveway or lot gets several more years before the next real repair.
Asphalt repair is one scope within our asphalt and concrete paving work, part of the site, structure and envelope family alongside excavation and grading. On commercial lots, restriping can follow in the same visit.
Tell us what’s broken
Send the address and a photo of the worst spots. You’ll get a straight read on patch versus replace and a budget range within a couple of hours during business hours, a day at most.