Questions we get asked on the phone

Tar and chip — also called chip seal — is a surface built in place. Liquid asphalt is sprayed over a prepared base, stone chip is spread into it while it is hot, and the whole thing is rolled so the stone locks into the binder. The result is a hard, dark, textured driving surface. We build ours in two layers rather than one.

They solve different problems. Tar and chip creates a driving surface, which is why it is the answer for a gravel lane. Sealcoating protects an asphalt surface you already have, by putting a coat over the top to keep water and weather off it. If you have gravel, you want tar and chip. If you have asphalt that is going grey and starting to crack, you want crack filling and sealer.

Yes, and it is one of the most common jobs we get called for. One recent customer was tired of the gravel washing away in the rain and making a mess; another had a half-mile lane and was sick of dumping more rock and working potholes out of it by hand. Both got the same treatment: graded, sprayed for weeds, pre-patched where it needed it, then two layers of tar and chip.

We fill them first. Sealer is a coating, not a repair — poured over an open crack it runs straight into it and you have paid for nothing. On a sealcoat job the order is always: patch what has failed, fill the cracks, then coat the surface. We will also do crack filling on its own if that is all you want done.

Driveways and private lanes are the bulk of it, but the same work applies to small commercial lots, farm entrances and work yards. Grading is also a service on its own — if all you need is a lane pulled back into shape, we will come and do that.

We are based in Princeville, Illinois, in Peoria County, and that is our home ground. We travel out from there — recent work includes a half-mile private lane in Germantown Hills. If you are not certain you are in range, call and ask.

We do not publish prices, because there is no honest way to. A hundred feet of residential driveway and half a mile of rutted woodland lane are not the same job, and what the surface is doing right now changes the prep more than anything else. Send us the address, roughly how big it is, and a couple of photos, and we will come back to you on what it takes.

Call or text (309) 415-1952, email us, or fill in the form on the contact page. Photos of the surface help more than any description — if you can send a shot down the length of the drive and a close-up of the worst section, that is usually enough for us to tell you what we are looking at.