Black Magic

   There is no cure all for sealing an aging driveway. I inherited a fatally neglected driveway when we purchased our house. Well past its prime, this modest slab has become an ongoing project of trying to avoid replacing the whole thing. Some years later, my cumulative efforts have started to yield a stronger, easier to care for driveway.
   The journey has led me through a whole lot of products that are a complete waste of time and money. The best tip I ever got was to use asphalt sealer as crack filler. It costs a fraction of what is doled out in those little liter bottles and is of much higher quality. My freshman attempt at sealing used a whole lot of those bottles and it did not even last two years. I can report that after eight years and four sealcoats, the sealcoat / crack filler method works well.
   Hot liquid fillers are superior, given the time and resources, but if you are buying multiple pails of sealcoat, you already have the product on hand and will most likely have leftovers. To reinforce this method, I use a layer of trowel mix across the top of all my seams. This is by far my favorite consumer asphalt product, if applied correctly, it as strong as your asphalt. I have rebuilt aprons, depressions, divots, and failing edges. When we removed the turnaround from our drive, large sections of this product remained intact even after being hit with a sledge.
   The additional trowel mix step is important because unattended cracks sink from water washing out the sub base. The trowel mix levels out the surface and allows the water to shed the way it was intended. In more complex scenarios, I use several drywall knife sizes similar to applying joint compound.
   It may sound like I have mastered DIY asphalt repair, but there is an Achilles heal. All commercially available sealcoats have a terminal thickness. So be warned, if you get addicted to that deep black magic, it comes at a high cost. The topcoat will lose its elasticity and the entire surface will flake off. The ten year warranties are bunk as well, even with the best conditions, it will need maintenance every few years.

Satellite Imaging

   It is Spring in Montana, or at least on the calendar it is. This is the first year since my two sons came along that I will be able to get back to large outdoor projects. The winter months were spent looking out the windows of our home, dreaming of finishing what I had planned years ago.
   My wife's grandparents had raised the bar high with a beautiful estate that they nurtured for decades. Now my goals are not as ambitious, nor luxurious, but I do have an appreciation for dense, well planned landscaping. Considering the age of our neighborhood and the surrounding properties, I chose a multi-stage approach to integrating the new work with into its context. One benefit to this approach, is a staggered growth cycle that looks more natural than having five trees that are the exact same height. This year's construction includes the extension of an existing rock bed in our backyard.

   The new area will offer more privacy with a screen created by evergreen trees, as well as eliminating nearly 1100 sq. ft. of lawn. Personally, the strongest motivation for me is no longer feeding, weeding, watering, aerating, and mowing this section of yard.
   We wrestled with this project for awhile and needed help visualizing the end product. The sketch above is rudimentary and seems deceptively simple, but this is the seventh rendering for the site. The crucial part of this sketch was acquiring an aerial photo of our property. Many years ago, before drones came along, this was an expensive proposition. Thanks to satellite imaging from search engine maps, I was able to get an image that was "good enough" for our purposes.
   In order to recreate an accurate, workable plan, I used drawing software that allowed me to set architecture scale and import raster images. I took several measurements of the existing river rock bed and then used these real world dimensions to scale up the drawing to full size.
   Using basic, vector drawing tools I was able to play with the bed's perimeter shape many times over, generating several drawings for comparison. This is not always necessary, but can be greatly helpful when trying to share visual ideas with others. The detailed plan gave me confidence to hit the ground running with a layout for new trees and a precise starting point as well.

DIY Asphalt Driveway Removal, Resolution

   I would like to act like the driveway project was spontaneous, and I was somehow sticking it to an anonymous group of teenage, street-racer thugs, but that is not the case. Yes, they were the final straw, but I had already invested a significant amount of time designing the surrounding landscape while considering all the possibilities for the failing asphalt.
   Even with a pretty good idea, I will wait and let my subconscious process the details for as long as possible. I devoutly believe in the "back burner" thought process, and I have witnessed the benefits with every major modification to our home. At this point, I can attest that it has paid off with better design and engineering, versus bullying through with my first broad, initial impulse.

   As mentioned before, the perimeter of the new walkway was laid out directly on the pavement with Sharpie markers. This turned out to be an essential part of the creative process. There were no true right angles to base my geometry on. The edges of the asphalt had severely degraded and I had to approximate where to start my straight runs and then adjust the dimensions accordingly.
   I soon came to realize that by eliminating the semicircle driveway, it united two large sections of evergreen shrubs which had been independently cultivated. It would turn out to be the unifying solution that I had not have foreseen years earlier.
   Up to this point, we had slowly cut back the original plantings trying to find the underlying organization. Thirty-five years of thoughtless additions with inadequate upkeep had rendered the property's landscaping an eye sore. The sea of river rock was buried in detritus slowly turning into mud. Countless weeds and knee-deep dead juniper aside, there were some redeeming qualities such as mature, healthy trees. Little did we know it was going to take hundreds of man hours to achieve the needed clarity.
   One of the previous upgrades from a few years back were the raised beds. It made sense to build upon this design element and continue it around the to the front of the house. These beds also visually reinforce the fact that there is no longer a quick turnaround for wayward motorists.
   I had no idea that when I embarked on this hefty, dramatic change, that it would ultimately bind together the last six years of hard work into a cohesive package.

DIY Asphalt Driveway Removal, Part One

   When we bought our house I was rather indifferent to the semicircle driveway. There were so many other fires to put out, that I only noted the condition of the neglected pavement and that it probably should have been resealed some ten years ago. I researched the lifespan of a residential driveway and knew ours was at the end of its life. I did not budget for this expense and it fell far behind replacing the cedar roof that the crows were eating daily. I did some repairs and seal coated the asphalt trying to bide us more time.
  The real problem would show itself as we lived in the new house. We are located at the entrance of a busy neighborhood and our continuous drive provided a quick roundabout for lost motorists. To make the problem worse, there is a business plaza located across the street which amplifies the amount of misdirected traffic.
   I had gone as far as installing an industrial speed bump, hoping to deter drivers from the quick exit. I finally had it, when purely by chance, I witnessed two teenage drivers drifting sideways, racing through the narrow semicircle. They had to be going no less than 20 mph. At that moment, still reeling in complete disbelief of what I had just witnessed, I made the decision that the semicircle had to go. I began laying out ideas immediately.

   To start, I needed to cut break points in the pavement. This would define the new edges of the walkway I was creating. I needed to cut a minimum of 100' of linear asphalt and some concrete. After getting a reasonable, yet high quote from a local paving expert, I realized that I needed to figure out how to do this myself. Ultimately, it was cheapest for me to buy a low-end Skil saw and a 3-pack of DeWalt masonry blades. This was cheaper than renting a concrete saw while yielding similar results.
   Fortunately, I have one of the nicest, most generous neighbors ever. He gladly pitched in and offered to haul away the broken up slabs. The most I could offer him was to help, when he in turn removed his semicircle drive, which was a mirror image of ours and the source of his headaches.   
   I laid out my lines directly on the pavement with chisel point Sharpies, The lines remained for a couple days until all the cuts were made. Now it was the moment of truth, could I easily break up the pieces?...Yes! and once I got going with the pry bar, I was unstoppable. I do recommend that you have a landscape plan before moving forward because there is a significant amount of compacted road mix under the pavement. I knew that I was going to put large river rock on top so I did not need to remove it. My neighbor decided to put in grass, so we had to excavate several inches of material. This also resulted in us needing to haul in several yards of topsoil.
   When laying out my perimeter for the new drive and walkway, it occurred to me that not only would there be less to shovel in the winter, there would also be less asphalt to seal coat. Granted this is not doable for everyone, but I wanted to let you know about my interesting solution. The second part of this story will cover the hardscaping and the resolution of the newly unearthed space.