Hamilton County is Cincinnati and the suburbs around it, and it is the hilliest ground we work on. The city climbs from the Ohio River up steep hillsides to ridge top neighbourhoods, and a driveway here is as likely to be pitched like a ramp as laid flat. That changes how a coat goes on, how long it needs, and what a crack might be telling you.
Cincinnati, Blue Ash, Montgomery, Sharonville, Springdale, Forest Park, Norwood, Reading, Madeira, Wyoming, Loveland, Cheviot, Harrison, and the townships: Anderson, Colerain, Green, Delhi, Sycamore, Symmes and Springfield. Loveland spills over into Clermont and Warren counties, and we cover all of it.
The Ohio River forms the county's southern edge. The Mill Creek valley runs north from it with I-75 in its floor, the Little Miami forms the eastern edge, and the Great Miami crosses the far west on its way to the Ohio. Between them the land is cut into hills, with I-71, I-74 and the I-275 loop threading through.
Much of that hillside ground is weathered shale that turns to a weak clay, and the Cincinnati area has one of the highest per person costs of landslide damage of any city in the country. For a driveway, the practical point is this: a crack that runs across a sloping drive, widens every year, or opens where the drive meets a retaining wall may be the ground moving rather than the asphalt wearing. Sealer will not stop that, and we will say so rather than coat over it. The city publishes guidance for homeowners on hillside movement, and it is worth reading before paying anyone to fix the surface.
Sealer is a liquid when it goes down, and on a steep drive it wants to move. Whether it is sprayed or spread by hand, the coat has to be worked so it stays even from top to bottom instead of thinning on the slope and puddling at the low end, usually the garage or the street. The low end also collects every drop of runoff if it rains before the coat has set, so a steep drive needs a firmer weather window than a flat one.
Two more things change on a hill. Tyres turning on a slope scuff a fresh coat far more than tyres rolling straight on the flat, so the stay-off time is worth taking at the long end of the range, see how long to stay off a sealed drive. And a north facing drive on a hillside may get little direct sun in the autumn, which slows the cure, so those drives get done earlier in the season and earlier in the day.
Cincinnati requires a permit for any work in the right-of-way, including building a driveway approach and repairing sidewalk, and its own page says a licensed contractor must be hired for driveway work in the right-of-way. That license is the city's Street Contractor License: $145 new or $105 to renew, with a half-year license at $75 from 1 October, a $10,000 surety bond, and a license year running from 1 April to 31 March. On the 2026 fee schedule a residential driveway permit is $70 for up to two square yards plus $5 for each unit beyond that, a single-family sidewalk with one driveway is $30, and a $16 technology fee is added.
Blue Ash charges $50 per job for a right-of-way permit, and the contractor posts a street opening bond: $3,000 on most city streets, $5,000 on arterials and downtown, or a $10,000 blanket bond renewed each year for contractors doing several jobs a season, still with a permit for each job.
The rest of the county, the other cities, villages and the townships, we have not yet confirmed from their own published rules. Each is checked before an apron job there is priced, and county and state roads have their own permits.
In Cincinnati the apron is only taken on when the paving contractor on that job holds the city's Street Contractor License and pulls the permit in its own name. Sealing and crack filling that stay behind the sidewalk are not listed by either city as permit work.
This season's jobs so far have been further north, and they are all on the projects page. The work here is done by a local independent contractor, the same arrangement as everywhere else we work.
Yes. It takes more care getting an even coat down the slope, a drier forecast, and a longer wait before you drive on it.
Not before someone has looked at why. On a hillside that pattern can mean the ground is moving, and sealer will only hide it for a season.
Yes. It is right-of-way work, and it has to be done by a contractor holding the city's Street Contractor License.
Both. We cover Greater Dayton and Greater Cincinnati, and Hamilton County is the southern end of that.
North of the county line: Butler County and Warren County.
