I hate to say this, but it sounds like you may have fallen for one of the oldest home improvement scams around. This con game has been around for at least 50 years. Even the presentation is classic -- typically the grifter is "doing work in the neighborhood" and knocks on your door with an Offer You Cannot Refuse.

If you got thinned-out asphalt coating, consider yourself slightly more fortunate than some victims back in the day. They got old used motor oil.

I honestly don't know what to recommend. Maybe you could call a legitimate local asphalt company and ask them if they have a fix.

I hope you got the jerk's license plate number.

Maybe cover with a layer of rock chips like they do when resurfacing a road over the tar. Try on a small area first. Or pea gravel. Sounds like it was a scam. Call your city hall and see if others were taken advantage of. Sounds like a scam/mess.. sorry.

I failed to take down the license number, rather just his name & cell number. I'm panicking! Gravel wouldn't allow shoveling to be done. I'm afraid any fixes will cost a fortune, which is why I fell for that guy to begin with (I didn't want to turn down the opportunity, and he had worded it so convincingly, that he sounded like he was really experienced. But he turned out to be lazy & very contrary [latino, btw]. He demanded $225 cash, and claimed that was cheap, and that other people just take him without asking "so many questions" and then leave for the day, letting him get on with his work. He definitely was an arrogant jerk - even asking mockingly if i live alone. And he hasn't been returning my phone calls.

....Would a steam roller do the trick?

Never hire door-knockers, only people you have called yourself.

What are the cops going to do? This is a civil matter for the courts.

If your city requires a business license, I bet he didn't have one.

David, thanks so much for explaining about chip-seal & also thanks Izzy for putting out that suggestion. I was also wondering if a leaf blower might help dry it?

Also, is this what you mean? See:

https://images.homedepot-static.com/productImages/d327a759-6351-4f92-9d85-33c567d98813/svn/road-rescue-driveway-sealers-repair-ap-50-64_1000.jpg

Trust me, this truly extreme situation has been a first for me, and it was due to the circumstances. Also, he didn't ask me that 2nd creepy Q until later, when he was into the work. And you can't imagine how knowledgeable and "presentable" he appeared - as if he was very experienced, and attached to a legit. outfit which was doing other work in the neighborhood. And i wasn't meaning to be "politically-incorrect" to you. Rather explanatory. In fact i have a lawn/leaf guy of that persuasion and he's an absolute angel. In fact he may be stepping in soon to see what's what, and he feels terrible about what happened, even if it was totally disconnected to him. He gave me the same warnings which all of you have. And yes, i'd learned long ago that they come in all stripes. BTW, i'd asked him yet years ago if he knows of a guy who does sealer, but the one guy he knew had been unreachable at the time.

No matter how much i think i was cured of believing liars, there are different levels of conmen, and when there's someone REALLY good at scamming COMBINED with circumstances, guess what? It will probably happen to me again in future, unless either my luck changes (fat chance) - or the world exists in this sorry state that long.

You know something else? I've been nervous about giving his phone number etc. to the police, for fear he'd get back at me in case the cops handle it wrong. That's not an illegitimate worry.

I am another who wouldn’t hire someone who just showed up at the front door.

Around here the roads are sometimes sealed with sprayed tar which is then topped with sand or very fine gravel. I would buy some play sand, remove any leaves and dispose of them in the trash, and top with sand.

It is a scam. It does need to be reported to the police, so you can save others from being scammed like you are. My elderly lady next door at our last house, fell for the same type deal. Myself and two of our other neighbors, tried to tell her to not let him do it, but, she wouldnt listen. She ended up with the horrible mess. It stuck to car tires, and people would drive from her house and still have some stuck to their tires, and it would get on their own drives. They stopped coming to her house, unless, they parked in my drive or the drive on the other side of her house. It irritated us and other neighbors, because, we would need to get out of our drive, and their cars were blocking it. All this lasted for about a year, until that drive way settled down enough to actually be used again. At that time, she did call someone, and it cost her quite a lot of money to get the drive in great shape again.

saying he'd been doing driveway work in the neighborhood,

Look around the neighborhood and if you spot a newly sealed one, check to see if it is still gooey. Talk to the owners.

So I kept hollering for him to come back and spray more on the rough areas, so as to hopefully fill in the rough areas. Finally he agreed, but that only resulted in a way worse nightmare, because it puddled, (Now you know one of the reasons why he was reluctant to add more sealer.)

Get a driveway squeegy or a trowel and spread the puddles out. Broadcast some sand or fine gravel, as suggested above.

No clue where you live but, generally speaking, with fall and cooler weather, it is going to take quite a lot longer for the sealer to cure. Longer still if the walkway is in shade. Best time is during the hot summer months.

Had some asphalt guys in my neighborhood. They installed a blacktop drive for one neighbor and sealed another neighbor's driveway. They even fix a depression in our driveway where a tree came down and left a big divot. Fixed it at no charge, even.

A couple of times, we have hired guys with stump grinders to grind some stumps for us. They were going through the neighborhood hustling jobs. Did a good job, did it on the spot and for a really reasonable fee. vs, calling someone to do a job and then they don't show up. Or don't return phone calls. Having to get on a wait list, etc. So, the people out there hustling work aren't all bad eggs.

I think that if you give it some time to dry & cure, everything will turn out OK.

Again - which brand seal-chips or play-sand should I get, that's widely available everywhere, and in bulk? BTW, it's approx. an 80' x 3 1/3' walkway (and when the sun is out, it does get plenty of sun because it's on the south side.)

Also, how would i be able to shovel on top of seal-chips or play-sand?

In response to the above, how i wish I'd have had on-siteneighbors like cat_ky to have warned me! As it is I had tried Home Depot and Lowes but didn't reach anyone truly helpful. I tried also speaking to the guy's supplier but got nowhere, because a girl answered who knew nothing, and simply said that they're just suppliers, not responsible for what buyers decide to do. So if i'd have cat_ky's type neighbors, i'd certainly have listened. Please don't compare me to aforesaid lady!

Not just that but after they'd smeared the patch (the day prior to the sealer) I'd scrambled to research the internet, but found nothing related to my situation, namely - loads of leaves falling. The temperature forecast was more or less within the range of the warnings stated on the internet, and since he'd assured me it would dry within 24 hours, and that leaves wouldn't stick, i went ahead with it. What a liar - he'd be a perfect deputy for Kim Jong Un, uh... if not for the language barrier.

If only there would have been a "real-time" S.O.S. Chat-Room on the Net specifically for emergency situations like this, I'd have been spared a huge nightmare, because not everyone is fortunate to have knowledgeable & available neighbors.

btw, the guy even had 2 other guys working for him, as it appeared "beneath his dignity" to crouch down on his own and smear on the patch. One of his men was like a child painting, so i motioned for him to kindly hand over his trowel, and corrected his botch job myself. Then later, (next day) i took out my own squeegee-brush from my garage and demonstrated to the head-honcho how i wanted him to evenly spread the extra goo he'd sprayed, but predictably, he arrogantly ignored my request. He's evil, i don't know what else to call it.

Another thing: I think there needs to be a law requiring sellers of seal-coatings to demand that buyers present a license, given the kind of anguish it can cause in the wrong hands, such as Cat_ky's horror-story.

".. a guy knocked on my door saying he'd been doing driveway work in the neighborhood..."

Cant believe people are still falling for this scam..

BTW, as alternative to my above bolded questions, might a grass-carpet possibly work as a solution? Can it be shoveled on?

I don't really have a good sense of how big or deep these dips are that you wanted filled in the first place because they caused problems shoveling snow, so it's hard to visualize a solution.

I don't think artificial grass carpet would be good for a driveway. I'd go with the sand/gravel approach I think. Assuming these are an inch or less deep, very fine gravel (1/4") to fill it to the surface and then sand to fill in between the gravel. If it looks bad because it doesn't match the black of the rest of the driveway, buy the smallest can of black driveway sealer you can get and paint over the surface to match.

This is basically an asphalt patch you're making. The only real problem with the original goo is that it didn't have any gravel in it. :-D

Not a way to do business. You need to pay someone to remove the stuff - if they can.

toxcrusadr, thanks for the tip to avoid grass carpeting! Geoffrey suggested removal - would some sort of heater work the trick? (to dry it) He'd also left some bald spots of patch that i don't even think he sprayed the sealer on, and that seems to also be goo.

• To anyone in the know, If i choose sand, how deep the layer? (cuz some people above did suggest sand, and that seems to be the affordable option)
• If the sand sticks to the goo, is there a risk the dirty-sand would become muddy? Or is road-repair-sand less muddy?
• If the sand is spread on the black/sticky walkway, can it then be snow-shoveled?
• How to calculate the # of pounds sand i need? I remeasured the walkway and it's about 182 feet in area. Going on the premise that i need one inch depth of sand - if that's correct, do i need 1,512 pounds of sand?

BTW, it's more like "pockmarked" rather than "dips". The original paving guys years ago failed to smooth some parts well. The result was that there were some rough spots along the walk, wherein ice could collect, making it slippery, since "ice-within-grooves" tend to evade shovels.

Jally, I'm kind of concerned about your situation there. Please don't take this the wrong way, but from what you've posted here, I have the sense that you probably don't know any more about asphalt than I do. And if this had happened to me, I doubt that I'd try to fix it myself. I worry about what kind of results you're going to have going out and buying a bunch of sand or gravel or whatever. You could end up making things worse (and more expensive to fix)..

Don't get me wrong, it's good that you're seeking advice on this forum. Honestly, though, none of us is there, standing in your driveway. We don't know the total situation. We can't see and touch the stuff that's on your driveway.

Is it decent asphalt sealer that just hasn't set? Crummy low quality sealer? Sealer cut with used motor oil? Something else entirely? We have no way to tell.

So, one more time, I'm going to strongly suggest that you put down your computer or phone or tablet or whatever, and pick up the phone to a reputable local asphalt and paving company.

If you don't know who to call, ask friends and co-workers. Or call a few local businesses and stores, and ask the managers who they last paid to resurface their parking lots.

The person who can best tell you what's possible to deal with this mess will be the one who has a lifetime of experience with asphalt work, and has checked out your driveway and determined what kind of goo is on it.

Good luck.

I see, thanks, but it's easier said than done for someone who can't afford to go broke, especially since this house has been a major money pit, and because it's hard to find decent workers during these times. Believe it or not, this comes in the midst of my waiting (since my June downpayment) for a guy to come fix my rotten exterior windows and rotten doorsteps (due to their lack of awnings & flashing). The guy kept stalling due to weather or prior commitments & so forth. But he has a legit. window business, so i hope it's different. Whereas this other guy proved a total fraud.

Would a local paving/repair company bother giving me advice (such as whether sand is safe) by phone? Small chance. There's usually secretaries who politely state their bosses are out in the field, and that they can't give any advice without first coming to take a look at it.

So hypothetically:

I'm just trying to calculate the amount of sand needed for 55' x 3 1/3'

But i don't know if it needs to be an inch - or much less than an inch deep.

Am i the only one on Houzz who has these extreme crises? Like, another time, I had a guy putting rubber-roll on my patio, and big raised bubbles developed. They eventually settled, but at the time, i felt in crisis & so did he. I'd even posted the depressing pictures on Gardenweb. And after all that, the agonizing proved to have been for the wrong thing, because rain still seeps into the below garage, NOT from the overhead patio, but rather due to the masonry guy having left his worker to do a botch job digging the trench at side of garage, since that's were it seeps in. And guess what - that mason guy had a very reputable business, and yet that happened. I'd say maybe 50% of jobs which were done for me over the years, were shoddy, and it's been taking a major toll on me.

You will have a gooey mess if you add sand, or anything else to that. Unfortunately, you either have to put up with it, until it wears out, or hire someone to come in and remove it all professionally. You dont want to create more mess than what you already have.

OK, now a few of you advised Pro Sand, and others advised either to contact a pro or wait it out. And meanwhile, tons of leaves keep falling & sticking to it, and rain keeps coming, soon to be followed by avalanches of snow, because there are slopes leading down to the driveway (from the windy-west).

,,,which means - how will i get out of my house to go anywhere, without being able to easily shovel toward the road... It was a nightmare even prior to this. And now it's beyond belief. The reason i'd done the center-walkway, was cuz the original driveway had become degraded (including the sealcoat which had been laid above it years ago). So it had been difficult to shovel.

And meanwhile, tons of leaves keep falling & sticking to it, and rain keeps coming, soon to be followed by avalanches of snow, because there are slopes leading down to the driveway (from the windy-west).

Sounds like you are in Wisconsin or thereabouts because your weather sounds exactly like my weather. Wrong time of year to apply the sealer compounded by unusually cool and wet weather. Wrong application because the sealer is supposed to be an even coat with no puddles. The puddles are on you because that is what you asked/ demanded on the rough patches. Falling leaves/ wet leaves are another impediment to getting the sealer to dry and cure.

Go get the sand. Clean building/ concrete sand, the coarse stuff. Not masonry sand. Estimate how much you need for 1/8-1/4" depth. Broadcast it over the walk. Fine aggregate & sand for the puddles. Give it time.

Sand is cheap. Wrong time of year to do anything else with the walkway short of ripping it out and pouring concrete (weather permitting) or laying pavers.

I would scoop up a sample of the goo from one of puddles and bring it into the house to see how long it takes to cure.

Did you check the neighborhood for other fresh asphalt jobs? Talk to the homeowners? Asked the mailman if he's noticed a newly sealed driveway on his route?

"Would a local paving/repair company bother giving me advice (such as whether sand is safe) by phone?"

Does it hurt to call and ask? You may find a sympathetic ear.

Pictures of what you have currently may help, although I am afraid you are essentially peeing in the wind without anyone seeing exactly what you have now.

>You should never do any business with a "tradesperson" who approaches you unsolicited this way.

Not 100% true. I had a large tree cut down a few years ago and huge stump. A random person showed up who had a stump grinder and gave me an offer I couldn't refuse. 70 dollars.

Do you know the name of the product used? Can you obtain: description, specifications, and installation instructions?

I estimate 40 bags of sand, I recommend against using sand.

Lots of replies since I suggested sand. I was assuming that 95% of the driveway was dry and able to be walked/driven on, and that you had a few cracks and dips where the tarry sealer was still soft. I was recommending fine gravel and/or sand on top of those, and then walking/driving over it to embed the gravel/sand into the tarry goo to give it some structure. I was NOT visualizing the entire driveway being sticky and covering the whole thing with 5000 lb of sand! If the whole thing is sticky, that's a much bigger issue. But in that case a thin layer of sand should help cover the sticky surface, and you shouldn't need an inch thick of it. I'd get a few bags and sprinkle it on part of the driveway, and see how it goes. Once the sand has stuck as much as it's going to - and that will require some traffic of some sort - sweep away the excess.

Right now my entire body is SCREAMING due to strenuous work yesterday doing leaves AND neighbor's leaves which also blow westward to my drive. But my efforts are like trying to empty out the ocean, since there's still leaves on tree's. I now have pus built into my arthritic knuckle (due to yesterday's streuous efforts), and a blasting migraine. And this is only what i'm saying in writing. There's too much to explain.

It's very difficult to scan the neighborhood and/or ask mailman.

Also:

I don't know the name of product used. He told me next to nothing.

Today, a guy from the highway dept. said he'd come take a look at my situation. I don't know if he came, and still waiting for a return call (if he'll call). Too often people have told me they'd do something and then would get distracted by "other priorities".

Thanks for all the feedback everyone! I jotted down some key words, such as clean building sand / concrete sand (coarse, not masonry) 1/8" deep, fine aggregate, fine gravel etc. Frankly, i wish i were dead, i'd be better off than my life.

Jally, calm down a bit and take care of your health. Its not the end of the world. It may take some time, but, let it go until you can deal with it a bit better. Life gets hard, a whole lot of us have hardships in our lives. Sometimes, it seems, there are more things going wrong than what are going right, but, eventually, it all comes out ok. Your drive will be ok too, in the end.

The stress this is causing you troubles me more than the underlying problem itself and I hope you are able to get this sorted quickly. Is there anyone you trust that can help you in person, or even over the phone? It's great to see that you have had plenty of suggestions here, but it is naturally going to be limited by what we do and don't know. Because of the nature of the scam, there is a lot that you don't know and can't tell us, but someone on site might be able to figure out. I certainly don't want to deter anyone from contributing, but I really think that you need more than online support, to deal with the stress this is causing you as well as resolving the issue itself.

On a side note, it can be hard for people to understand how people fall victim to such scams. They have been going for many years and in many countries. However, the reason they are still going on is precisely because there are enough victims to sustain the scammers. A combination of highly persuasive scammers, who modify and update the scam over time, and a victim caught at a bad moment is all it takes. I spent a few years in Nigeria, which has a long-term problem with scams and saw how an obvious fraud could be easily turned into a very persuasive scam that fooled people who knew the country far better than I ever would.

Even if the leaves stick, they're not going to stay there forever. They will get dry and crunchy and break up and be washed away in the rain. It may not look good now, but trying to keep every leaf off of it is obviously more than any reasonable person can manage and still maintain their sanity!

Kinda horrifying that this stuff would stay sticky that long. It was probably diluted quite a bit with diesel fuel or some such.

OK, as per above request i posted these pics (with added notes on some of them). I'd like to thank all of you for your support, because at least i had somewhere to turn during the last week of horror!

Y'all will be happy to hear that this past Thurs, my forementioned really-nice lawnLeaf-guy showed up to check out the sealer for me, and the next day, Friday, the highway dept. guys showed up too. All of them tested the walkway by walking on it, and gave the all-clear, saying it's dry (even if shiny), and that even the patch was like soft-tar, but didn't leave marks on their hands. (I still suspect, though, that there may still be a few non-dried spots, such as where leaves stuck to).

Despite their assessment, that doesn't mean the guy wasn't a scammer. They all realized how shoddy it is, as y'all can see from my pics. You can even see in the last pic. above how he sloppily let the goo squirt onto the slab near garage. I felt like he enjoys making people squirm & having the "mucho macho" upper hand. He had the nerve to ask me if i live alone! My lawn-guy was horrified when i told him. He even had met the paving-guy, since he was driving by when the work was being done, and stopped to say hi to me, whereupon i told him the hassle & non-cooperation the guy was giving me. So then the jerk began chatting with him. But my lawn guy couldn't stay, since his wife was waiting for him. When i later told my lawn-guy that the paving-guy had told me he knows him, the lawn-guy told me he does not know him.

OK, as per above request i posted these pics (with added notes on some of them). I'd like to thank all of you for your support, because at least i had somewhere to turn during the last week of horror! It's so very kind of you.

Y'all will be happy to hear that this past Thurs, my forementioned really-nice lawnLeaf-guy showed up to check out the sealer for me, and the next day, Friday, the highway dept. guys showed up too. All of them tested the walkway by walking on it, and gave the all-clear, saying it's dry (even if shiny), and that even the patch was like soft-tar, but didn't leave marks on their hands. (I still suspect, though, that there may still be a few non-dried spots, such as where leaves stuck to).

Despite their assessment, that doesn't mean the guy wasn't a scammer. They all realized how shoddy it is, as y'all can see from my pics. You can even see in the last pic. how he sloppily let the goo squirt onto the slab near garage. I felt like he enjoys making people squirm & having the "mucho macho" upper hand. He had the nerve to ask me if i live alone! My lawn-guy was horrified when i told him. He even had met the paving-guy, since he was driving by when the work was being done, and stopped to say hi to me, whereupon i told him the hassle & non-cooperation the guy was giving me. So then the jerk began chatting with him. But my lawn guy couldn't stay, since his wife was waiting for him. When i later told my lawn-guy that the paving-guy had told me he knows him, the lawn-guy told me he does not know him.

P.S. If you enjoy puns, you might say that the paving-guy was like

this highwayman: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ouZSLckCvgQ

But that the "highwaymen" who came Friday to assess my drive, were the opposite!

Jally, I am happy you are feeling a bit better about this. Winter is coming, just let it go for now, and when nice weather comes back again, get a reliable, well known driveway company, come and do it right for you. By then, all the stuff the guy put on, will most likely be gone anyway.

Well, time will tell, and i'll be too busy again trying to round up the guy i contracted with for my rotten windows/doorsteps to even think of tackling the walkway. I'd have kept the walkway on the back burner for years anyway, if not for the wiseguy showing up. And going by my track record, who's to say other crises won't be cropping up as well by then. Anyway, i figured i'd update everyone, and so i did.

Ah, so it dried despite the worry and the weather. This is good.

I moved to central Wisconsin from western Oklahoma about twenty years ago. I soon learned that the old saying about 'watching paint dry' has a whole 'nother layer of meaning here in cool, humid WI. Remember painting a small wagon with oil-based 'John Deere' paint that I started to doubt that it would ever dry/ cure. It did but it took not hours, not days, but weeks!

I think alot had to do with my "babysitting it" (to the extreme detriment of my already-existent arthritis). I kept at it with that brush & squeegee you see depicted above. I raked & blowed many tons of leaves from 10am. until about 5pm with no break.

Re: your John Deere experience, anything you can do i can do better. Years ago, i decided to polyurethane the hardwood floor of this approx. 10'x9' computer room. I lined up a guy who turned out not to know what the heck he was doing. The first part of my nightmare was that the horrible local Walmart personnel lied to me on the phone by lazily stating they don't have Minwax water-based polyurethane in stock. (Afterward i happened to go there, and saw they actually DID have it!) Anyway, suffice that i then went to a closer store, where they just had Ben-Moore oil-based polyurethane.

I then watched as the young punk i'd hired merely turned the can upward & downward prior to opening it, so i asked him "isn't it necessary to mix it with a stick"? And he confidently assured me no, he'd done it before with no problems. (He never bothered reading the instructions). Like a fool i trusted him. Result: My house stank toxically for days & it never dried. I needed to get someone over to scrape it off to the tune of $100. As i said, most hiree's i've had over the years were unsatisfactory, and some were downright horrible.

The latest whom i contracted for my rotten windows/etc. - i just found out from the local consumer agency that the guy has known problems, and that nearly 20 complaints were put out on him. They said i should get the ball rolling with a formal complaint, including cancelled check, contract, etc. I did that today.

Not for nothing but I think you need to reevalute you hiring and vetting practices.

Please be sure to cancel contract for the windows you signed correctly. Do it in writing certified return receipt (go to the post office and they can help you) If you signed a contract you only have a few business days (I think 3-5 days not sure) If you signed they have to provide you in writing (probably in contract somewhere) on how to cancel the contract. Do it now!!! Or you may get stuck with this contract.

Polyurethane normally doesn't settle out like paint so he was right about that. But if it doesn't dry, it usually means it's old product. I've had that happen especially when I used old cans that were already opened. I found that if I bought fresh and put a layer over the top of the sticky layer, it would dry normally and no more sticky. I wonder where he got that stuff and how long it had been sitting.

Izzy, sorry, i should have said "contractors invoice". The latter was filled with his semi-legible scribbling, and does not contain my signature. (He scribbled his name, address, phone number, and itemized list of costs for each job. I.E. windows, doors, etc. And also scribbled the total cost. From what i heard from the consumer agent, i don't know if there's much hope he'll refund me easily, so i'm concerned. Especially because of the way they went about it. It's too difficult for me to elaborate about the specifics on this forum.

toxcrusadr, i bought the BenMoore from a very reputable old-established hardware store. Afterward i had contacted BenMoore, who confirmed that it required thorough mixing, and I asked why they didn't put a more CONSPICUOUS warning on the front & top of the can. They sent one of their guys to my house to assess the situation, and he offered me a can of paint of my choice for the walls.

You may want to let your neighbors know via Nextdoor that there is someone in the area doing this type of work that you do not recommend-- so that they do not have the same bad experience.

Since he is sleazy, I doubt that he would be on Nextdoor in your neighborhood.