New Jersey winters are not the coldest in the country, but they may be some of the hardest on asphalt. Temperatures bounce above and below freezing again and again, nor’easters dump wet snow and then rain, and road salt gets tracked onto every driveway in the neighborhood. Each of those swings gives water a chance to get into the pavement, freeze, expand and pry it apart.
The good news is that most winter damage starts with a small weakness you can see in October or November. If you take care of it before the ground freezes, your asphalt has a much better chance of coming out of March looking the way it went in. Here are the two treatments we recommend most often.
Treatment 1: Deal with weak spots before the first hard freeze
Every opening in an asphalt surface is a doorway for water. A small hole, a broken edge where a car tire keeps dropping off, a spot that has started to crumble near the garage apron: all of these collect water. Once that water freezes, it expands and pushes the surrounding asphalt up and outward. When it thaws, the pavement settles back down a little looser than before. Repeat that cycle dozens of times in one season and a fist-sized hole becomes a crater.
Finding these weak spots early stops that process before it starts. Some causes are simple to correct: an edge that keeps breaking because the lawn beside it has washed out can be backfilled and supported, and a spot that floods every storm can often be fixed by redirecting water. Others point to a base that has started to give way, and that is worth knowing before winter rather than after it. A surface that is tight, supported at the edges and draining properly sheds water instead of trapping it.
A few things are worth checking on a fall walk-around:
- Holes and depressions of any size, especially where cars turn or stop.
- Broken or unsupported edges along the lawn line, where the asphalt has nothing beside it to hold it in place.
- Soft or spongy areas that flex when you step on them, which usually point to a base problem underneath.
- Areas around utility covers or drains where the asphalt has pulled away.
If several of these problems are spread across the surface, small fixes will only buy time. That is when we talk about milling off the worn asphalt and repaving, or full asphalt driveway paving with a new base, so you are not pouring money into a driveway that is near the end of its life.
Treatment 2: Take control of where the water goes
The second treatment is less about the asphalt and more about everything around it. Water is the real enemy in winter, and on many New Jersey properties the driveway is collecting far more of it than it should.
Start with the house. Downspouts that empty straight onto the driveway send roof runoff across the surface all winter long, and that water refreezes into ice sheets every night. An extension or a simple splash block that moves the discharge onto the lawn makes a real difference. Clogged gutters do the same damage in a less obvious way, overflowing along the edge of the drive.
Next, look at grading. After a heavy rain, walk the driveway and note where puddles sit. Standing water means the surface or the ground beside it is not pitched to drain. In low-lying parts of Monmouth and Ocean counties, and anywhere with clay-heavy soil, that water has nowhere to go and works its way into the base. Sometimes a soil berm along the edge is holding water against the asphalt; regrading the lawn so it slopes away can solve it. Other times the driveway itself has settled, and the low spot needs to be corrected.
A few winter-season habits that help
Once the two treatments are done, how you handle the season matters too:
- Use a plastic shovel blade, or set snow blower skids so the blade rides slightly above the surface.
- Choose a calcium chloride ice melt and use only what you need, then sweep up leftover granules once the ice is gone.
- Do not pile plowed snow on the edges of the driveway, where meltwater soaks the base for weeks.
For a closer look at what cold weather does to asphalt, read how the winter season affects your asphalt driveway, and for a fuller checklist see our 5 tips on readying your asphalt for winter.
If you are not sure whether your driveway needs edge work, regrading or a new surface, we are glad to take a look and give you a free estimate before the weather turns.
Need this done right?
Dan The Paver handles asphalt driveway paving across Monmouth, Ocean (Toms River and north) and southern Middlesex counties. Free on-site estimates.