Asphalt Question

javan

I have never been involved with any paving, but have a new paving question. It is my understanding that when an area is paved, the ground is first leveled or pitched and compacted, as the asphalt is nothing more than a top-coating. I have an area of my existing driveway that needs to be repaved, additionally, another area needs to be re-pitched since it pitches towards my house. I do not envision that this could be handled with a simple new application of asphalt, can it? Can they build up an area w/ asphalt to change pitch?

The other option I see is to totally remove the existing asphalt, add fill, regrade, then re-pave....

kbrena

Yes you can asphalt over existing asphalt. Many of the streets you drive on are probably an asphalt overlay. You will need to sweep or blow off the asphalt, then cover the area that you are overlaying with an emulation called tac. It will make the hot asphalt adhere to the old. The Tac on the asphalt is like the glue for wood. You will be able to get the tac in 5 gal. buckets at any asphalt plant. You paint it on with a tac broom, also referred to as a toy broom because it looks like a miniature broom.

Icefishww

Yes - if you want to change the water shed direction the existing asphalt has to come off and the base will have to be re-graded. You do not change the grade with differing thicknesses of asphalt. Won't be cheap but there are lots of small contractors around that are talented, reasonable and looking for work. If you've got operator skills you can do it yourself with rental equipment if the projects not too big.

Icefishww

you can do everything but the paving yourself.........

kbrena

I have to respectfully disagree with you about needing to remove the asphalt. I work for a City and we do thin tapering and leveling over asphalt often. Building a taper upwards to his house to divert the water is very doable. He would be able to have an asphalt company deliver what he needs. They back up to your project and dump when or were you need it. There usually quite helpful. A hand tamp and Tac is all you would really need for a job that small. It is very similar to what we do when we build berms on travel-ways to divert water from homeowners. We us "G" or "C" grade mix depending on how thin the level or taper needs to be. "G" mix has less aggregate, when we are picking it up we ask them to add extra sand if we are doing a very thin level.

javan

Thanks for all the responses. This will be a late summer project, so I have some time to think it through.