Montgomery County is where most of this season's driveways have been. Kettering, Clayton, Germantown, three in Dayton itself, and Englewood booked for the last week of September. This page covers the towns we work in, what the valley and the housing here do to asphalt, and the rules each city applies when a job reaches the street.
Dayton, Kettering, Oakwood, Centerville and Washington Township, Huber Heights, Vandalia, Englewood, Clayton, Trotwood, Riverside, Miamisburg, West Carrollton, Moraine, Germantown, Brookville and Union. If your address is in the county and the town is not listed, send it anyway.
The jobs themselves, with the dates, are on the projects page.
Dayton is built where the Stillwater and the Mad River run into the Great Miami. After the 1913 flood, the Miami Conservancy District put dry dams across the valley, and three of them sit in this county: Englewood on the Stillwater, Taylorsville on the Great Miami north of the city, and Germantown on Twin Creek. Between the rivers the land is flat or gently rolling, which made the subdivisions easy to lay out and left a great many driveways with very little fall on them.
A drive with no slope does not shed water. It keeps it in shallow dips, the ones that still show as a darker patch the morning after rain. In winter that water freezes where it sits, on the surface and down any crack that runs through the dip, and a Miami Valley winter goes back and forth across freezing far more often than it stays below it. Sealer does not change the shape of a driveway. If a dip holds water, the quote says so and says whether it is a patch, a levelling job or something to live with.
The older city. In Dayton's older neighbourhoods and in Oakwood, lots are narrower, many drives are a single car wide, and some houses are reached from an alley behind rather than from the street. Tight drives are mostly edges: foundation, wall, the neighbour's fence, a brick walk. That is hand work, and it is where a careless job shows first. Oakwood's mature trees add shade, leaf stain and sap, and a coat cures more slowly under a canopy than on an open drive.
The post-war suburbs. Kettering grew quickly in the decades after the Second World War, and Huber Heights was built largely by one developer, Charles Huber, whose company put up thousands of brick ranch houses from 1956 onward. When a whole street is built at once, its driveways tend to age together and show the same faults in the same places: the joint against the garage slab, the seam where the drive meets the apron, and edges crumbling into the lawn.
The country edge. Clayton, Brookville, Germantown and the western townships have bigger lots and longer drives. A long drive is usually in the sun all day, and sunlight is what turns asphalt grey fastest. Its edges often meet gravel or grass with nothing holding them up, and an unsupported edge breaks away in pieces unless the cracks along it are kept filled and sealed.
The apron, the stretch between the sidewalk and the road, usually sits in the city's right-of-way, and so does the curb and the public sidewalk. Every city here that we have checked wants a permit before anyone replaces an apron, cuts a curb or repairs that sidewalk, and the conditions change at each city line. From each city's own published rules:
Sealing and crack filling that stay on your side of the sidewalk are not listed as permit work in any of these cities' rules. Apron work in Oakwood, Huber Heights or Riverside only goes ahead when the paving contractor on that job already holds the city's license, approval or registration; if not, we tell you and quote the rest without it. Fees change most years, so the current one goes on your quote.
No. The city says a driveway on private property needs no city permit. The apron at the street is different, and only city-approved contractors may work on it.
Yes, as a paving job, done under an Oakwood permit by a paving contractor holding Oakwood's license. The rest of the drive can be sealed the same season once the new asphalt has had time to cure.
No. We sealed a drive in Clayton and one in Germantown on 10 September.
Usually not. Concrete and asphalt move differently with temperature, so the joint between them opens. It gets filled and sealed with the rest. If the asphalt has dropped below the slab, that is settling underneath and needs a patch.
Next door: Greene County to the east, Warren County and Butler County to the south.
