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Asphalt Repair and Patching in Colfax

Asphalt Repair and Patching in Colfax, Wisconsin.

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

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4.7 from 18 Google reviews

About 25 minutes northwest of 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.
1,252 People in Colfax
4.7 Google ratingFrom 18 reviews
2-3 yrs Reseal cycleIn Colfax
400°F Crack fillerDirect-fire rubber

What an Asphalt Repair and Patching Job Looks Like in Colfax

For a village of this size the commercial surface is unusually spread out, which matters when you're pricing a job rather than looking at a map.

Main Street is the retail corridor and it runs in two clusters, the 100 block and then the 400 through 600 blocks, with small frontages and shared access. East Railroad Avenue is the second one, and it's the heavier of the two: the co-op with its fuel and agronomy traffic, the village public works yard, the museum. University Avenue is the whole school campus on a single site, elementary and high school together, which is one large parking area with a summer-only window.

Then there's manufacturing, on Bremer Avenue and Willow Street, which is genuine industrial loading in a village most people drive through without noticing it has any.

Asphalt Repair and Patching specifically in Colfax

The 1960s drives are the ones that most often have to be cut into in Colfax, because the original base was thin and a section has finally given up. Those get taken back to something firm rather than skimmed.

The Driveways and Lots in Colfax

Colfax sits on the Red Cedar River in Dunn County where Eighteen Mile Creek joins it, about eight miles north of the I-94 corridor. Highways 40 and 170 are the routes through the village. The river banks here are steep and wooded with sandstone outcrops, which isn't incidental: the village had a sandstone quarrying industry and its two landmark buildings are both built from the local stone.

Colfax is really two housing stocks, and the reason is specific. On June 4, 1958 an F5 tornado crossed the south and east of the village and leveled dozens of homes. Those parts were rebuilt afterwards, and the Census figures still show it: almost 30 percent of the housing here dates from the 1950s, a far larger share than any other town in the area, with driveways laid to match.

The parts the tornado missed still carry the older stock, including the 1915 municipal building on Main Street and the 1914 depot that's now the railroad museum. What that means in practice is that two drives a few streets apart in Colfax can be forty years different in age, and they want different answers.

Colfax

We work the whole village rather than a named handful of neighborhoods.

Around Colfax: Colfax Municipal Building, Colfax Railroad Museum, Red Cedar River, Colfax Red Cedar Preserve, Felland Park.

Standard 48-inch frost depth. The Red Cedar corridor through the village has steep banks and real grade change, so drainage varies sharply between the river side and the flat ground west of Main Street.

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 Colfax

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 Colfax

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 Colfax

What Colfax calls us about, answered straight.

More questions answered
Our house is in the part of town that was rebuilt after the tornado. Does that matter?
It tells us roughly what the driveway is: late 1950s or 1960s, often laid thin over whatever base was there at the time. Some of those have held up well and seal beautifully. Others have a base that was never really built, and no amount of sealer fixes that. The age narrows it down; walking on it settles it.
Is Colfax too far out for a driveway job?
No. It's about twenty-five minutes and we work Dunn County regularly. As everywhere, several drives on one street in one visit costs each of you less than one drive on its own.
Our drive is on the river side and the neighbor's is up on the flat. Same job?
Usually not. The Red Cedar corridor through the village has steep banks and real grade change, and the ground west of Main Street is flat by comparison. On a slope the water moves, which means a crack acts as an inlet and takes fine material out of the base as it drains. On the flat the water sits, which is a different problem with a different answer. Two drives a few streets apart here genuinely want different work.
Fewer than half the homes here are single-family. Does that change anything?
It means a real share of what looks like residential work is actually shared surface: duplexes, small apartment buildings and the parking that goes with them. Those carry more vehicles than a single drive does, wear at the entrance and the aisle rather than in the middle, and get quoted like a small lot with the bid saying which areas are included. That last part matters when more than one person has to approve the number.
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 Colfax

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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