Asphalt Patching and Repair in Des Moines, IA

Asphalt patching removes a failed section of pavement, whether a pothole, a soft spot or a patch of alligator cracking, and rebuilds it with fresh base and hot mix; on Des Moines Lobe soils the failure usually starts with water in the base. Pavement Interactive describes a pothole as the end stage of fatigue cracking: interconnected cracks let chunks of asphalt work loose until a bowl opens all the way to the base course. Spring is when that happens here, because thawing till loses bearing capacity just as the freeze-thaw season peaks. Driveway repair of this kind is structural work, and it comes before crack filling or sealing, never after.

Frozen ground thaws from the top down. For a stretch each spring the thawed layer under the asphalt sits on soil that is still frozen, so the water in it has nowhere to drain, and the pavement rests on a wet, weakened cushion. Pavement Interactive notes that loads which do little harm in summer can be quite damaging during thaw periods, which is why road agencies cut allowable loads in spring. A driveway gets no such protection. Delivery trucks, a moving van or a loaded pickup parked in the same spot through April can turn a hairline fatigue pattern into a pothole before the ground firms up again.

Patches come in four grades, and HomeGuide prices each one separately. Cold patch, at $2 to $4 per square foot, is packed and tamped without heat, so it can go in during cold, wet weather. Hot patch, $2 to $5, uses plant-mixed asphalt compacted in place. Infrared patching, $2 to $6, reheats the existing surface before new mix is worked in. A saw-cut, full-depth patch, $4 to $12 per square foot, removes the failed section down to the base and rebuilds it. On a pothole that opened over saturated Webster or Nicollet soil, only the full-depth repair deals with the cause.

A full-depth patch follows a set order. The failed area is marked out past the visible damage and saw-cut into a square or rectangle, so the new edges are straight and vertical. Broken asphalt comes out, and so does any wet, pumping soil under it, replaced with compacted crushed stone. The cut edges get a tack coat, hot mix goes in, and it is rolled flush with the pavement around it. Iowa DOT specifications tie minimum lift thickness to aggregate size, 1.5 inches for a half-inch mix, so a deep patch is built in more than one compacted layer. Any dig below the pavement calls for an 811 locate request at least 48 hours ahead.

The decision looks different in the old city and in the suburbs. The Census Bureau counts more than a quarter of Des Moines housing units as built in 1939 or earlier, and a drive that has been repaired again and again over those decades can reach the point where patches outnumber sound pavement; an overlay or replacement is then the better use of money. In the newer suburbs, isolated failures are more typical: a corner that holds water, a soft spot at the apron, or a depression where fill settled because it was not compacted well. Fresh patches should cure before a sealcoat covers them, and the cost page prices both jobs.