Pothole & Patch Repair in Rapid City, SD

Pothole and patch repair fixes the parts of a driveway, lot or private road that have failed, so the rest of the pavement can stay. Potholes, washed-out edges, dips over old utility trenches and patches of alligator cracking are the usual problems. In a chinook climate, they grow fast: water gets in, freezes, thaws and freezes again, and a crack becomes a hole in a single winter.

Four ways to patch

HomeGuide describes cold patch at $2 to $4 per square foot, hot patch at $2 to $5, infrared repair at $2 to $6 and saw-cut patching at $4 to $12. Cold patch is a stopgap. Hot patch and infrared work on surface damage. When the base under the hole is soft, only a saw-cut repair fixes the cause: cut a square around the failure, remove the bad material, rebuild the base and pave back.

Why patches fail

Most failed patches were shoveled into a wet hole with no base work and no compaction. By spring the patch has sunk or popped out. We dig to firm ground, replace soft material with compacted base, tack the vertical edges and compact hot asphalt in lifts so the patch is flush and tight.

Washouts and hillside edges

On sloped driveways and private roads in the Hills, runoff cuts along the edge of the pavement and undermines it until a piece breaks off. Repair means rebuilding the support under the edge, repaving and fixing the water problem, whether that is a ditch, a culvert or reshaping the surface to shed water before it reaches the edge.

Repair or replace?

HomeGuide lists small crack and pothole repairs at $100 to $400 and major driveway repairs at $600 to $3,000, with minimum service fees of $100 to $250. If repairs would cover a large part of a driveway, or the whole surface is cracking, an overlay or replacement is often the better value. We give you both numbers.

Winter holes

Asphalt plants slow down in the cold and hot-mix does not compact on frozen ground. If a hole cannot wait, cold patch keeps it safe until spring, and we return with a permanent repair when conditions allow.

Private roads and shared drives

Private roads serving several homes in the Hills often go years without a plan, and potholes multiply. We can survey the whole road, list repairs by priority with a price for each, and give every owner the same scope so the group can decide together. Grouping repairs into one visit also avoids paying a minimum service charge several times.