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Asphalt Repair and Patching in Strum

Asphalt Repair and Patching in Strum, Wisconsin.

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

Get a Free Estimate Call (715) 450-9897

4.7 from 18 Google reviews

About 25 minutes southeast 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.
1,068 People in Strum
4.7 Google ratingFrom 18 reviews
2-3 yrs Reseal cycleIn Strum
400°F Crack fillerDirect-fire rubber

What an Asphalt Repair and Patching Job Looks Like in Strum

For a village this size Strum has an unusual amount of commercial surface, and it's spread across five streets rather than concentrated on one.

Fifth Avenue North is the retail spine: the grocery, the bank, the post office, the dentist, and the telephone cooperative that serves twenty-five communities from a building here. Fifth Avenue South carries the village hall and the library. Maple Street is where the industry actually is, a millwork plant and the co-op agronomy site, and it's worth naming precisely because Strum has no industrial park to point at.

The largest single parking demand in the village is the school campus on Highway 10. Eleva-Strum consolidated into one building here, so elementary, middle and high all share one site, and any work on it happens inside the summer window or not at all.

Asphalt Repair and Patching specifically in Strum

The Maple Street industrial end takes the loading that produces real failures: millwork and agronomy traffic on the same turns year after year. Those get cut back to sound material rather than patched at the surface.

The Driveways and Lots in Strum

Strum sits on the Buffalo River in Trempealeau County with Crystal Lake on its edge and US Highway 10 running through as the main route. The Buffalo River State Trail, thirty-six miles of old railroad corridor between Mondovi and Fairchild, passes through the village. Rolling hills in open farm country, and unusually for this area, unglaciated ground.

A village of about 1,100 on a compact grid, with the older stock close to Fifth Avenue and newer building out toward Crystal Lake. Drives are short in the core and get considerably longer as soon as you leave it.

The Crystal Lake end is its own thing. A campground and a golf course sit out on Crystal Lake Drive, and the surfaces there are seasonal: heavy use for five months and empty for the rest, which wears differently from a driveway used every day of the year.

Strum

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

Around Strum: Crystal Lake, Woodland Park, Crystal Lake Park, Buffalo River State Trail, Buffalo River.

Standard 48-inch frost depth. The important local difference is that Trempealeau County is unglaciated, so instead of the sorted sand and gravel outwash we work in up the Chippewa valley, the subgrade here's residual soil over bedrock. It holds water differently, and a drive that ponds in Strum is usually telling you something about grade rather than about drainage.

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 Strum

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 Strum

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 Strum

What Strum calls us about, answered straight.

More questions answered
We run a seasonal business out at Crystal Lake. When should the lot be done?
Either side of your season rather than through it. Sealer wants warm pavement and a dry cure, so late spring before you open or early fall after you close both work, and both beat trying to seal around campers in July. Talk to us in the winter and we'll book the slot.
Is Strum inside your area for a single driveway?
Yes. It's about twenty-five minutes and we work down that way along Highway 10 regularly. As anywhere at that distance, two or three drives on the same street in one visit costs each of you noticeably less than one on its own.
Water stands in one spot on our driveway. Is that a drainage problem?
Usually it is a grade problem here rather than a drainage one, and Strum is the place where that distinction matters. Trempealeau County is unglaciated, so instead of the sorted sand and gravel we work in up the Chippewa valley, the ground under a Strum drive is residual soil over bedrock. It holds water differently. A drive that ponds here is normally telling you where the surface falls, not that something below it has stopped working.
Does the ground here really behave differently to Eau Claire?
It does, and it is the one thing worth knowing about pavement in Strum. Trempealeau County is unglaciated, so instead of the sorted sand and gravel we work in up the Chippewa valley, what is under a drive here is residual soil sitting on bedrock. It holds water differently and it drains slower, which changes where a surface fails and how a base gets rebuilt. A repair specified for a lot in town is not automatically the right repair out here.
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 Strum

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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