Driveway repairs in Macclesfield
Most driveway faults are local, and most of them are cheap to put right if somebody looks at them before the water has been getting in for two winters. A single pothole is an hour's work. The same pothole left alone fills with water, freezes, opens further, softens the sub-base underneath it and takes a square metre of drive with it.
A repair should come with a reason. Almost nothing fails at the surface for surface reasons — a sunken patch means the base beneath it has moved, a crack that keeps coming back means something below is still moving, and blocks that go wobbly in one spot usually mean the edge restraint has let go somewhere you have not looked yet. If a contractor cannot tell you what failed underneath, they are patching a symptom and you will be ringing them again.
Frost is what turns a small fault into a big one, and how much frost you get here depends on where you live. The Met Office records air frost ranging from around twenty days a year near the coast to over seventy-five in the higher Pennines, with temperature falling roughly half a degree for every hundred metres of height. Buxton averages 51.5 air-frost days a year against 40.0 at low-lying Woodford in Cheshire. Kerridge Hill is 313 metres and Shutlingsloe 506, so a hairline crack in Rainow is getting worked on considerably harder than the same crack in Broken Cross.
This is also where the doorstep trade does its damage. Nobody reputable knocks on your door because they were passing and noticed your drive, and nobody reputable has surplus tarmac that has to be laid this afternoon. If you did not ask them to come, they do not touch your driveway.
Driveway repairs — every job, in detail.
6 jobs in this category. Each has its own page explaining what's involved, what your contractor checks and — just as importantly — when a job can safely wait.
Driveway repair
Putting right the faults that are cheap now and expensive after another winter — potholes, cracks, settled areas, loose blocks and failing edges. Every repair starts with working out what failed underneath, because almost nothing on a driveway fails at the surface for surface reasons.
Read more →Pothole repair
Cutting a pothole back to sound material, dealing with the softened base underneath it and reinstating the surface in compacted layers — rather than tipping cold material into a wet hole, which is the repair that always comes back.
Read more →Sunken or subsiding driveway
A driveway that has dropped in one area has lost support underneath it, and the reason matters — a settled service trench is routine, a void over a failing drain is not. The area is opened up and the cause established before anything is relaid, and a sudden or deepening hollow gets looked at quickly.
Read more →Cracked driveway
Cracks are how a driveway tells you what is happening underneath it. The pattern matters more than the width: a straight shrinkage crack in concrete, a map pattern across tarmac and a stepped crack with two different levels are three different problems with three different answers.
Read more →Trip hazards & uneven surfaces
A lifted slab, a rocking block, a broken edge or a step that has appeared where the surface has moved — dealt with quickly, because these are the faults that actually hurt somebody. Making it safe is a short job; working out why it lifted is what stops it happening again.
Read more →Crumbling driveway edges
Edges fail first on almost every driveway, because the edge is where the surface has nothing holding it in. Repairing one means restoring the restraint — a concrete-bedded, haunched edge course — rather than patching the broken material and waiting for it to happen again.
Read more →Not sure which one you need?
Describe it in your own words on the quote form. Your contractor will work out what the job actually is when they ring you back — usually the same day.
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