Asphalt Paving and New Drives in Cedar Rapids, IA

Asphalt paving here means building or replacing a driveway from the ground up: excavating, laying and compacting a stone base, and placing hot-mix asphalt in rolled lifts, and in Cedar Rapids the base does most of the work because the airport station logs about 143 nights a year at or below freezing. An asphalt driveway installation that skimps on base over silty ground will heave and soften in spring no matter how good the surface looks on day one. This page covers what a paving contractor should build, which permits apply, when the hot-mix season runs, and how long to wait before the first driveway seal. Installed price ranges are on the cost page.

Thickness guidance varies, so a local yardstick helps. In HomeGuide's description, a typical home driveway gets 2 to 3 inches of asphalt on a compacted gravel base 6 to 8 inches deep. The City of Robins, just north of Cedar Rapids, writes its standard into code: Chapter 140 requires at least 3 inches of Type B asphaltic concrete over 6 inches of compacted Class A road stone. On loess or other silty ground, which pavement references rank among the most frost-susceptible soils, the deeper end of those base ranges, plus edges that shed water, is where the money belongs.

What the drive sits on changes the design. The Iowa Geological Survey notes that on the area's paha ridges, porous loess and sand sit over clay-rich buried soil and glacial till, which produces hillside seeps. A drive cut into such a slope may need drain tile or an open-graded base to carry that water away. On the excessively drained Chelsea sand mapped in Linn County, drainage is easy but the base has to be compacted well to stay firm. A contractor who digs a test hole before pricing is working from the ground, not from a template.

Permits come before the first load of stone. In Cedar Rapids, digging in the public right-of-way requires an approved Application for Excavations in Public Right-of-Way Permit, and the city's builder handout requires sidewalks at least 6 inches thick through driveways and 1 inch of expansion material, sealed against surface water, at the back of the curb. Robins requires a city permit to remove, reconstruct or install any driveway, caps width at 12 feet per garage stall and 36 feet for three stalls or more, and grants a curb cut only when the drive is hard surfaced. Widening a drive also adds hard surface to the Cedar Rapids stormwater bill.

Temperature sets the hot-mix season. Iowa DOT specifications bar paving when the shaded air temperature is under 40 degrees without an approved cold-weather plan and require road-surface temperatures of 40 to 50 degrees for thin surface lifts. Airport normals put the average April high at 60.7 and the November high at 46.5, so most residential paving falls between late April and October. After paving, SealMaster says new asphalt needs at least 30 to 60 days before sealer, and HomeGuide suggests waiting a year, so the first coat usually goes on the summer after installation.

Overlay or replacement is a question about the base. Angi describes a driveway overlay as 1 to 2 inches of new asphalt, and the city's own street overlays are a 2- to 3-inch mat, but either only works over firm pavement; Pavement Interactive ties alligator cracking to lost base support, and new asphalt over it tends to crack along the same lines. Angi prices overlays at $3 to $7 per square foot, replacements at $8 to $15 and new installation at $7 to $13, with tear-out adding $1 to $2 per square foot. HomeGuide's range for a new drive is $5 to $12 or more.