Blacktop Driveway Crack Repair Video

Blacktop Driveway Crack Repair Video Transcript

Oh hey, how are you doing? I’m just bringing out the last tool to start my blacktop crack repair job. Great weather today, blacktop’s dry and that's exactly what you need when you get ready to finish a blacktop repair job.

Here's what we've got. The first thing we need to do before we get started in case the safety police are watching. It's time to get on the new cool safety glasses. Oh yeah.

What do you think about that?

Now what we got to do, the first thing that it says on the instructions on the caulk or the repair sealant that we're going to use is you got to clean out the crack. I like to use a regular broom. It works really well. Just go ahead and sweep it out. Get all that loose debris and loose sand out of the way.

Oh yeah, simple as that and once again remember the blacktop’s got to be nice and dry. So let me show you what I've got what we're going to use today. We've got this nice crack and this particular crack is kind of like a v-shape. Because it’s v-shaped it's really pretty hard to install a backer rod that sometimes you have to use when you install a crack sealant with blacktop.

Use a backer rod when the crack is shaped more like this where the sides of the crack are pretty parallel. You'll get those cracks very frequently in a blacktop driveway but not this particular one.

So what we're going to do first is all you have to do is start with this compound. It's an asphalt repair sealant. Check this out says it right here asphalt repair.

It's got all the nice instructions and it looks like it's just like really caulking and simple all you do is go ahead and start to squeeze it out being really careful that you don't put too much of the material too high. Because you would have a real mess on your hands.

You can see how easy that comes out. it just flows out of the tube and one of the reasons it flows really well is because I made sure it wasn't too cold out here. The outside temperature right now here is about sixty sixty-five degrees. This material flows just beautifully out of this tube and you can see that now, check this out, get a little closer, I want to show you something.

I'm coming up to a really big wide area and I want to fill that up but not too high and you'll see in a minute why. And there's another one coming up right next to it. Oh yeah look at this right here you can see a big area I kind of put the sealant in there making sure it's not too high.

All right now, here's what I want to show you the next step is I've got this cute little stick it's actually from a piece of mulch. Check this out. You can see it's about a quarter-inch

wide and I found it in the mulch actually right next to the blacktop drive. I just use that, come down here close, I want to show you something.

I actually want to spread this sealant so that it smears on the blacktop on either side of the caulk and I'm also making sure that the caulk sealant is not too high and this makes for a really really good bond so that the crack sealant material will not come out.

Come down here where it's really really wide. Before I started the job I went around and I found some of the rocks that had actually come out of the blacktop drive. What you do is actually put these rocks right in the sealing compound. I know it sounds crazy but this actually helps it helps disguise the crack for one and it helps make the crack sealant work a lot better because it makes it stronger.

And you just push those rocks down into the sealant and then you push the material up against it so that the cracks and so that the cracks fill up with material and it sticks well against these little rocks.

The final step in the process is to actually take some of this magic compound that I have in this can next to me. Oh-ho, wait till you see this trick! A lot of people don't do this. This is one of the secret Ask the Builder tricks.

Before I started the job I went to the sides of the driveway and I found some sand and some of the sand came from the stones and the rocks around the driveway. But actually matches perfectly some of the rocks that are actually in the blacktop. And you go ahead and just sprinkle this sand on to the fresh compound.

Look at that.  Simple as that and this sand does two things. Number one it will prevent tracking in case somebody makes a mistake and walks on this material and prevents it from it spreading onto the driveway. It does that, that's really important.

But number two it's actually going to help disguise this crack so that the crack looks more like the actual blacktop on either side of the crack. It's that simple to patch a blacktop crack. I'm Tim Carter for Ask the Builder dot com. If you want to discover more home improvement tips, go to AsktheBuilder.com.

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