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Asphalt Repair and Patching in Fall Creek

Asphalt Repair and Patching in Fall Creek, Wisconsin.

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

Get a Free Estimate Call (715) 450-9897

4.7 from 18 Google reviews

About 15 minutes east 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.
1,391 People in Fall Creek
4.7 Google ratingFrom 18 reviews
2-3 yrs Reseal cycleIn Fall Creek
400°F Crack fillerDirect-fire rubber

What an Asphalt Repair and Patching Job Looks Like in Fall Creek

Three parts of Fall Creek generate nearly all of its pavement work, and they could not be more different from each other.

Brickyard Street is the industrial one. The village business park sits there, twenty-odd acres beside Highway 12, and it carries the heaviest truck traffic and the largest private lots in the village. East Hoover Avenue is the school campus, elementary, middle and high all on the same site, which makes it the single largest parking demand in town and a job that has to happen inside a summer window. Lincoln Avenue is the main street: banks, bars, the cafe, the post office, all with small frontages and shared access.

The fourth is seasonal. The grain and feed co-op on East Miami Avenue takes farm truck traffic in a concentrated few weeks, which is hard on a surface in a way that steady daily use isn't.

Asphalt Repair and Patching specifically in Fall Creek

Brickyard Street and the business park take genuine truck loading, which produces a different kind of failure from a driveway: rutting and edge break-up at the turns rather than potholes in the middle. Those get cut out square and rebuilt rather than filled.

The Driveways and Lots in Fall Creek

Fall Creek sits on US Highway 12 about twelve miles east of Eau Claire, with I-94 another twelve miles on and County Road K running north toward Highway 29. The village takes its name from the rapids on the creek that runs through it, and the Eau Claire River passes just to the north.

A small village of about two square miles, so the housing is what you would expect: a compact grid of older homes near Lincoln Avenue and newer building out toward the edges. Drives here are shorter than the township average and longer than a town lot, which usually puts a whole driveway inside a single visit.

The more interesting pavement in Fall Creek isn't residential. For a village this size it carries an unusual amount of commercial and industrial surface, and that's where most of our work here happens.

Fall Creek

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

Around Fall Creek: Fall Creek Memorial Park, Keller Park, Randall Park, Beaver Creek Reserve, Hobbs Observatory.

Same freeze regime as the rest of the valley, with footings at 48 inches minimum. The creek and the Eau Claire River both run close, so the low ground near them holds water into spring longer than the higher parts of the village.

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 Fall Creek

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 Fall Creek

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 Fall Creek

What Fall Creek calls us about, answered straight.

More questions answered
Do you come out to Fall Creek for a single driveway?
Yes. It's fifteen minutes from Eau Claire and we're out that way regularly, so a single drive isn't a problem. If a couple of neighbors want theirs done at the same time it costs everybody less, because most of the price of a small job is getting the crew and the equipment there.
We're on Highway 12 with a fire number rather than a village address. Still in the area?
Yes, comfortably. The rural stretch along Highway 12 either side of the village is well inside where we work, and long rural drives out there are measured rather than guessed at.
The co-op takes farm trucks for a few weeks a year. Is that hard on a surface?
Harder than year-round car traffic, and in a different way. Concentrated farm truck movement puts axle loads on a surface for a short window with no recovery between passes, and the damage shows up as rutting and edge break-up rather than as cracking. The East Miami Avenue site is the clearest example of it in the village. The useful thing about a concentrated season is that the rest of the year is a working window.
Is the low ground near the creek different from up in the village?
Yes, and it is worth knowing before anybody quotes. Fall Creek and the Eau Claire River both run close to the village, and the low ground near them holds water into spring longer than the higher parts do. A base that stays wet through the thaw heaves harder than a dry one, so on those lots keeping surface water out through crack sealing is worth more than the appearance of the surface suggests.
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 Fall Creek

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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