Driveway sealing in Ottawa, on the right schedule and not before

Crack repair comes first and gets billed separately

Sealer is not a crack filler. Poured over an open crack it sags into it, leaves a depression that collects water, and does nothing to stop the crack moving. Anything wider than roughly 6 mm gets routed out to a clean reservoir and filled with hot rubberised crack sealant before the seal coat goes on. That work is priced on its own because the amount of it varies enormously between two driveways of the same size. Be careful with any quote that gives one flat number for sealing a cracked driveway. Either the crack work is not happening, or it is being absorbed by thinning the sealer, and thinned sealer is the cheapest way to make a driveway look black for one season.

Every two or three years, not every year

A seal coat wears from the surface down, mostly in the wheel tracks, while the coverage at the edges and the middle barely moves. Recoating before the old coat has worn down means new material going on over old material that is still fully there. Repeat that annually and you build a layer of sealer several times thicker than any one application was meant to be. Thick sealer does not behave like thin sealer. It has no flexibility to speak of, it sits on a surface that expands and contracts through every freeze-thaw event an Ottawa winter produces, and it cracks in a fine web of its own. Then it flakes. What you get is a driveway with patches of black coating peeling off a grey surface, which looks worse than an unsealed driveway and costs more to put right, because the accumulated coating has to be stripped before anything new can be applied. Annual sealing is a subscription, not a maintenance schedule.

How long new asphalt cures before its first driveway sealing

This is the single most expensive mistake made with sealer in Ottawa, and it is usually made with good intentions. A driveway is paved in July, it looks beautiful, and somebody suggests protecting it before winter. So it gets sealed in September.

Fresh hot mix is still releasing the lighter fractions of its asphalt cement. That process takes six to twelve months, and it is what takes the mat from soft and pliable to properly hardened. Putting a seal coat over the top part way through traps those oils in the binder. The mat stays soft and scuffs easily under turning wheels, heel marks and kickstands. Worse, the sealer cannot bond properly to a surface that is still bleeding oil, so it goes on unevenly and lifts early.

A driveway paved in July gets its first seal the following season, not the same autumn. That is not a scheduling preference, it is how the material behaves.

When we turn a driveway sealing job down

A driveway that is genuinely at the end of its life is better left alone until it is replaced. Sealing it makes it look better for one season, which is sometimes exactly what a homeowner wants before selling, and we will do that if you ask with your eyes open. What we will not do is imply that a coat of sealer is buying you years you are not getting.

The same applies to a driveway that was sealed last year, to one paved in the last six to twelve months, and to one with alligator cracking or standing water. In each case the honest answer is to wait, or to spend the money on the thing that is actually wrong. If someone knocks on your door every spring offering to reseal, they are not reading your driveway.

Any workmanship warranty is set out in your written quote, job by job. Call (343) 314-8525.