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Asphalt Repair and Patching in Madison, WI
Driveway repair in Madison is mostly a spring job with a base-course cause. Wisconsin's local-roads bulletin on seasonal weight limits explains the mechanism: pavement thaws from the top and the bottom, meltwater saturates the base, and it stays trapped above soil that is still frozen, so the base loses strength like dry dirt turning to mud. The thaw generally runs from early March to early May, and fine-grained silts and clays are the frost-susceptible soils. That is why a pothole that opens in March often sits over a wet, weak spot in the base, and why a patch that only fills the hole tends to reopen. Base repair is sometimes the real job.
$100 - $500 per pothole; $4 - $12 per sq ft for saw-cut full-depth patches · full pricing guide
Repairs come in four kinds. Cold patch is a stockpiled or bagged mix pressed into a hole, useful as a winter stopgap and priced at about $2 to $4 per square foot in HomeGuide's figures. Hot patch uses plant-mixed asphalt at $2 to $5. Infrared repair heats the old surface, reworks it with new mix and compacts it without a cold seam, at $2 to $6. A saw-cut, full-depth patch, which replaces damaged base as well as asphalt, runs $4 to $12 per square foot and is the only one of the four that fixes a base problem.
A full-depth patch done right follows a sequence. The crew saws a clean rectangle past the visible damage, removes asphalt and any wet or contaminated base down to firm material, replaces and compacts crushed stone, coats the vertical edges with tack, and places hot mix in compacted lifts. City of Madison specifications cap lifts in base patching at 3.5 inches and ask for 93 percent of maximum density in upper layers. Skipping the base replacement is a frequent reason a patch settles or cracks around its edges the following spring.
Timing splits repairs into temporary and permanent. Hot mix needs warm air: City specifications bar upper-layer asphalt below 40 degrees without written approval, and NOAA's normal highs at Dane County Regional Airport stay near or below freezing from December through February and reach only 43.1 degrees in March. A pothole that appears in March gets cold patch to keep it safe, then a permanent saw-cut repair in May or June once the base has drained. Leaving a hole open through the thaw lets more water into the base around it and widens the eventual repair.
Some damage is past repairing. The PASER manual rates a surface with alligator cracking over more than 25 percent of it a 2 and calls for reconstruction, and a drive that has been patched repeatedly often reaches that point one section at a time. When repairs would cover a large share of the surface, pricing a replacement driveway alongside the patch quote gives a fair comparison.
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Damage a repair can still handle
Repairs make sense while the damage is local and the rest of the pavement is sound; a pothole or two is a repair job, a field of them is not.
- An isolated pothole or two rather than a field of them
- One soft spot, often under a downspout or where a truck parked
- A broken edge along the lawn in one section
- A failed older patch surrounded by firm asphalt
- Cracking along a single seam rather than across the whole surface
Damage spread across more than a quarter of the drive is a replacement conversation.
Which repair fits the damage
The method should match the depth of the problem, not just its size on the surface.
Cold patch
A temporary fill for winter and early spring, when hot mix cannot be placed. Plan to replace it once the paving season opens.
Infrared patch
Heats and reworks the existing surface with new mix, leaving no cold seam. Suited to surface damage over a sound base, not to soft spots.
Saw-cut, full-depth patch
Cuts out asphalt and failed base, rebuilds the stone and repaves. The permanent fix for potholes and soft spots caused by a wet base.
Section replacement
When patches would cover much of an area, replacing that section with a new base and asphalt costs less over time than patching it again.
Asphalt Repair and Patching FAQs
Why does the same pothole reopen every March?
Because the patch filled the hole but not the cause. Water that reaches the base through the old crack or seam freezes and thaws there, and during the spring thaw the saturated base loses strength under every tire. Cold patch pressed into the hole in winter was never meant to last. A saw-cut repair that replaces the wet base and seals the edges with tack is the permanent version.
Is cold patch a real driveway repair?
It is a safe stopgap, not a permanent fix. Cold mix stays workable without heating, which is why it is the winter option, but it compacts poorly, bonds weakly to the old edges and tends to push out under traffic. It keeps a pothole from growing until hot-mix weather returns in May, when the area should be cut out and patched properly with a base repair if needed.
Can broken driveway edges be fixed without repaving?
Usually. The broken strip is cut back to sound asphalt, the base under it is rebuilt and compacted, and new hot mix is placed and rolled to match the existing surface. The repair lasts only if the edge is then supported: WAPA's owner guide recommends backing asphalt edges with stone, gravel, topsoil or grass so tires and plows do not break them off again.
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