On Wednesday, August 30, 2017 at 4:04:30 PM UTC-4, June Bug wrote:
The date is 30/08/2017 09:50

I think you already know or you wouldn't be here.

No I don't.
I have two unanswered questions that deal with the drive repair.

One is I ask you for advice on your experience with drive drainage given
the 45-year-old drive has two feet of soil on top of a 2-foot 45-degree
"swale" that I don't understand because I have never seen this before.

Have you seen this type of drain swale before?
https://s26.postimg.org/vfyd2yhbd/005_seals.jpg

How is it supposed to work?


How are we supposed to tell from a picture that shows a closeup of
one section? We have no idea the grade, how much surface area there
is, where the water goes to, etc. It looks like it's essentially
a gutter to take the water away, but then I'm not there when it's raining.
IDK what this means:

"the 45-year-old drive has two feet of soil on top of a 2-foot 45-degree"

But if the asphalt is 45 years old, the advice someone else gave, that
with all those big cracks you're going to need to think about replacement,
probably is right. Short of that, you're probably putting lipstick on
a pig. But then we can't see the whole thing either.




It's not hard to do, you can buy the supplies at the typical building
supply centers. I'm sure there are plenty of videos and DIY stuff
on the internet. If there is no patching, just some cracks, all
you need is an applicator brush/squeegee, a good broom. It helps
if you have an air compressor to blow out the cracks. But since you
don't have experience, don't know what it should look like, expecting
teenagers with no experience either to do the job is probably another mistake.

I watched videos yesterday where people were on their knees pressing black
strings cheese goop into cracks and then heating them with propane burners.


I think that rope type crack sealer is probably the best stuff there is
for a DIY. It melts and goes in hot.




All that fine detail and exquisite care for every quarter inch crack might
work for a drive that is twenty feet long but not 100 times that in length
which is shared by 9 people.

Which is why they have a variety of other products available too.
Pros use hot product or similar that comes off a truck, which is
probably what you need when you have a 2000 ft driveway that 9 people
are paying for.



Here's the equipment they used, for example (don't bother telling me about
the u-haul). I just want to know what kind of equipment was that? Do we
need it, for example?
https://s26.postimg.org/iw7tsyii1/001_seals.jpg

--
(Please keep this to home repair. I can see it's a u-haul truck.)

Looks like the cheap eqpt that a typical fly-by-night type would
use to apply seal coat. The eqpt isn't the problem, it and the truck
are symptoms of the problem. Guys who know what they are doing could
seal coat your driveway using that eqpt and do a good job. But pros
who know what they are doing usually don't drive around in a rental
truck with a small trailer.


Where were you when this was all happening? I can understand that you
wouldn't be able to tell what the specific seal coat product was they
were using. But you say there were areas on the sides that were covered
with dirt, that they just ignored. That there were cracks not done right,
other cracks you have pics of that were not done at all. It's not
rockets science that has to be done first, then the seal coat goes over
the whole thing. It's like painting a house, you do the prep work,
repairs first, then apply the top coat.
If they were applying seal coat, but cracks were not
done, dirt areas were still on the side, why wasn't anyone stopping them
and asking what's going on?

Did you have a written contract? What does it say? How large is
this job and what did you pay?