What has worked for me....for 8 bucks, you can buy a bag of cold patch. Use a block of wood and a hammer and work it into the joint. Once you get near the top, use a little kerosene, diesel fuel or even charcoal lighter on the block as you tamp it in. It brings the aggregate closer together and makes for a very smooth surface. In the areas where you drive in and out and the weight of the vehicle might leave some indents, you might have to add another layer. This would happen usually during the summer where the heat softens the asphalt a bit and allows it to give. I never noticed it the first year but the second year, they showed up ever so slightly.Before filling in the indents, use some asphalt primer or tack coat. A small bottle of crack filler solution would work. That allows permanent bonding between the old and new. Then tamp it in like mentioned before. The next time you seal coat the asphalt, it will all look the same. I used this process about 5 years ago and it did the job with no regrets.

izzie, What you describe sounds more like tar and chip. Your post makes for a lot of questions to be answered such as how old is the driveway, what type of weather conditions, have you ever seal coated it before, along with several other questions. What type of seal coating are you planning to use? There are several types. One of the biggest attacks on an asphalt driveway is sunlight and then chemical salts and acid rains. The next, depending where you live could be freeze/thaw movement, causing cracking. The sunlight and years of use will cause the asphalt and binders (small particles between the stone) to deteriorate and dislodge to the point they wash away. Then the larger stones become loose and start washing away or being pushed away during use. Many people use a sealer from the big box stores and local hardware stores which is a latex base. It's the equivalent of painting the driveway, in a way. The more the sealer costs, the better it usually is. That is because the more expensive sealers also include clay, which fills in the spaces and cracks and makes the asphalt appear smooth. Once you have used a latex based product, you should continue using it in future applications. The more expensive types have a 5 year warranty (or more) and the cheaper versions have a lesser warranty. There are also cheaper sealers which use an oil or, coal oil base. It does more for coloring than it does for sealing and has to be applied every year. My personal opinion is, to maintain asphalt, you need to do it with asphalt based products. I personally use an asphalt based product from a company named "Seal Master" (I wish I had stock in the company). You can get a better explanation of the products by visiting one of their web sites. A 5 gallon bucket is mixed with 10 gallons of water and it is a proprietary asphalt based product. It runs about 30 bucks for a 5 gallon container. Your particular driveway sounds like it needs the binder replaced. You merely mix a 5 gallons of the product with 5 gallons of water (50/50)for the initial application. With that, you mix sand and squeegee the slurry onto the driveway. This mixture fills in between the aggregate on your driveway, the asphalt base then binds with your driveway and serves to hold the stones in place for many years, as good as it was when it was new. You should let it cure for 3 days. I usually then mix the 10 parts water with 1 part binder and give it one more coating. The driveway is a nice black, skid resistant surface and doesn't have to be bothered with for many years. There are municipalities and states in harsh weather, high salt use areas that use this method on their roads.

"Sorry for the hijack, but for some reason I cannot post a message in the Home Repair forum. I can in all the others, but I don't think asphalt repair has anything to do with woodworking. So, that being said, I guess I'll ask my question here: Hi, absolutely brand new here since I googled "asphalt repair" I found this place. Anyway, I got an asphalt driveway installed 5 days ago. The old driveway was gravel, mostly dirt & grass. The contractor scraped the surface, rolled it, then laid down 2.5" of asphalt. Today (5 days later) I noticed cracks and "buldges" like something is trying to push up from underneath. The area is kind of soft. Is this just an example of shoddy construction, or are moles trying to destroy my new driveway? We do have moles. I live at 9,000' in Colorado if that makes any difference." The contractor did an improper job. Without the proper base,the asphalt will fail. And he didn't even put a base in. Ron

Why start another thread with the same question?