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Asphalt Repair and Patching in Chippewa Falls

Asphalt Repair and Patching in Chippewa Falls, Wisconsin.

Pothole, patch and sinkhole repair in Chippewa Falls, cut back to sound material and rebuilt properly.

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4.7 from 18 Google reviews

About 15 minutes from Eau Claire. Free estimates, and a straight read on whether it needs doing yet.

A Bobcat skid steer beside two saw-cut sections of asphalt on a commercial parking lot, work area coned off while cars stay parked around it.
15,075 People in Chippewa Falls
4.7 Google ratingFrom 18 reviews
2-3 yrs Reseal cycleIn Chippewa Falls
400°F Crack fillerDirect-fire rubber

What an Asphalt Repair and Patching Job Looks Like in Chippewa Falls

Old housing means old driveways, and old driveways in this valley were often laid thin over a base that was never really built. That's the honest problem in Chippewa Falls: more of the surfaces we look at here are genuinely past sealing than anywhere else we work, and telling somebody that costs us the easy job.

The commercial side is the opposite story. The industrial parks on the east side and out toward Lake Wissota are newer, larger and truck-heavy, with the kind of lots where catch basins and dock aprons carry real weight and fail on a schedule.

Asphalt Repair and Patching specifically in Chippewa Falls

The West Hill bluff sends water downhill, and the drives at the bottom of those grades are where asphalt fails first. Fixing the surface without looking at where the water arrives from is how the same patch gets done twice. Duncan Creek cuts through the middle of town and the ground either side of it behaves differently from the bluff above, so two drives ten minutes apart in Chippewa Falls can be failing for completely unrelated reasons.

The Driveways and Lots in Chippewa Falls

Chippewa Falls sits on the north bank of the Chippewa River with Duncan Creek running through the middle of it and Lake Wissota about three miles east. The West Hill rises on a bluff west of downtown, so the town has real grade: the hill and the river flats drain completely differently, and pavement on each behaves accordingly.

Chippewa Falls has the oldest housing stock we work in. Thirty-one percent of the city's houses were built before 1940, which is nearly double Eau Claire's share and eight times Lake Hallie's. Only about 16 percent has gone up since 2000.

The West Hill historic district is the clearest example: 163 contributing properties across 66 acres, running from 1870s lumber-baron mansions to 1950s ranch houses, sometimes on the same block. What that means practically is narrow drives, steep approaches, tight turns beside a house, and a lot of hand work. It's not a spray-and-go town.

Where we work in Chippewa Falls

  • West Hill
  • Downtown and Bridge Street
  • East Hill
  • Riverside
  • Lake Wissota

Around Chippewa Falls: Leinenkugel's Brewery, Irvine Park, Northern Wisconsin State Fairgrounds, Heyde Center for the Arts, Lake Wissota.

Same freeze regime as the rest of the valley, with footings required at 48 inches minimum. The difference here is the bluff: water coming off West Hill has somewhere to go and takes the long way, so drives at the bottom of a grade see far more of it than the ones at the top.

From our jobs

Job Photos

Two fresh asphalt patches laid in a worn parking lot, cones still around them
Full-depth patches laid and coned off
A crew member kneeling at a stall line working patch material by hand
Hand work at the stall lines
A fresh full-depth asphalt patch coned off in a commercial lot outside an industrial building with dock doors
A full-depth patch outside the dock doors

All job photos

Filled vs. repaired

The pothole that comes back every spring is being filled rather than repaired. Cold patch is a temporary measure and an honest one when it's sold as that: it's loose material tamped into a hole, with no bond to the sides and nothing done about the failed base underneath. It gets you through a winter. A real repair means cutting a clean square back to material that's still sound, taking out everything soft below it, putting the base back and compacting it in lifts, then laying hot asphalt and rolling it. The patch ends up stronger than what is around it, which is why the failure doesn't come back through the middle of it.

Filled

The quick version

  • Cold patch tamped into the hole as found
  • Ragged edges, so there's nothing to key against
  • Failed base left in place
  • Back within a season, usually wider

Repaired

What we do

  • Saw cut to clean vertical edges, back to sound asphalt
  • Soft material dug out until the bottom is firm
  • Base replaced and compacted in lifts
  • Hot mix laid, rolled, and the joint sealed

Cold patch has its place: it's the right call in February when nothing else can be done. It's the wrong call in July.

What Decides the Price in Chippewa Falls

Repairs are priced by area and by how deep the trouble goes, and the depth isn't knowable until it's open. These are the bands most jobs land in.

Single pothole

Up to a few square feet

Measured on site

  • Saw cut, dig out, base, hot mix, compact
  • Cheaper alongside other work

Failed area or apron

Roughly 50 to 300 sq ft

Measured on site

  • The common commercial repair, and the garage apron at home
  • Priced per square foot once the area is measured

Sinkhole or subgrade failure

Depth unknown until opened

Measured on site

  • Often a drainage or utility problem underneath
  • Assessed and quoted before the machine moves

Several repairs on one visit come down substantially per repair, because getting the machine and the crew on site is most of the cost of a small one. If you have three, have them all looked at.

Repair or repave?

Most lots that get deferred don't need repaving.

What we look at before quoting either one.

  • Two or three potholes, the rest of the surface is soundStraightforward patching. Nowhere near needing an overlay.
  • The garage apron has sunk where it meets the concreteCommon and fixable. Usually settlement under the transition, cut out and rebuilt.
  • Cracked into squares in a few areas, sound elsewhereCut those areas out full depth, patch, then seal the whole surface.
  • That squared cracking across most of the lotThe base has gone broadly. Patching it becomes a rolling cost with no end. An overlay or a rebuild is the answer.
  • Water sits in the same spot after every rainGrade or drainage, and it has to be solved before any surface work, or the new surface fails in exactly the same place.

Photos of the worst two areas are usually enough for us to tell you which it is.

How the Work Goes in Chippewa Falls

Same method on a driveway apron and on a loading dock approach.

Find the edge of the failure

The visible hole is smaller than the damage. We sound out where the surface is still supported and cut outside that, not around the hole.

Saw cut square, clean vertical faces

A patch keyed against a clean edge stays. A patch feathered against a ragged one fails at the joint, which is why so many patches fail in a ring.

Dig out to something firm

Everything soft comes out. If the bottom is wet, that's a drainage problem and the best patch in the world won't last sitting on water.

Base back in, compacted in lifts

Compacted in layers rather than dumped and rolled once. This is the invisible step that decides whether the repair lasts two years or twenty.

Hot mix, rolled, joint sealed

Laid to the surrounding grade so water still runs where it's supposed to, compacted, and the perimeter joint sealed against the next freeze.

Booking sealcoating and striping through October · Call (715) 450-9897

Questions We Get in Chippewa Falls

What Chippewa Falls calls us about, answered straight.

More questions answered
Our house is in the West Hill historic district. Are there rules about the driveway?
Resurfacing or sealing an existing drive is maintenance rather than a visible alteration, and it isn't the kind of thing that normally raises a question. Changing the shape of a drive, its material or its width is a different matter, and the city is the right place to ask before anyone quotes it. The estimate says which side of that line your job is on.
Why does everything cost more per square foot on a small old driveway?
Because it isn't the square footage that costs, it's the edges and the access. A pre-war drive on the West Hill bluff is narrow, often steep, and frequently runs right up against a foundation or a retaining wall, so both sides get cut in by hand rather than sprayed. A wide modern drive with grass on either side takes a fraction of the time for twice the area. We price that in rather than discovering it on the day.
How much does pothole repair cost?
Square footage and depth, mostly. A pothole that stops at the surface is a different job from one where the base underneath has gone, and you cannot tell which you have until it is opened. What we can tell you before that: several repairs done on one visit come down substantially per repair, because the trip and the mobilisation are already paid for. The assessment is free.
Why does my patch keep failing?
Almost always because it was filled rather than repaired: no clean cut, no removal of the failed base, and nothing bonding it to the asphalt around it. The failure was underneath and it's still there.
Can you repair a sinkhole in a driveway or lot?
Yes, and quickly. Our newest review is a sinkhole repaired within seven days. A sinkhole means material is being washed out from underneath, usually by drainage or a failed pipe, so the repair includes finding out why.
Is it cheaper to repair the asphalt or repave it?
Repair, until roughly a quarter to a third of the surface has failed. Past that you're patching patches and an overlay becomes better value. The estimate measures how much of your surface has actually failed.
How soon can we drive on a new asphalt patch?
Hot mix takes traffic as soon as it has cooled, usually a few hours. That's the material rather than a schedule: what a specific repair means for your lot is one of the things the estimate works out.

Get a Free Estimate in Chippewa Falls

Tell us what it looks like and we'll come measure it. You get a written price before anything starts.

(715) 450-9897
  • Free on driveways and lots anywhere in the service area
  • A photo of the problem helps, and it can go in the message
  • Surfaces that are not ready yet get told so at the estimate

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