Driveway and walkway crack check
Annual · typically September
Why it matters
Concrete cracks. All of it, everywhere, eventually — the crack itself isn't the problem. The problem is what water does once it's through: washing out the base underneath, and in cold climates, freezing in the crack and prying it wider every night below 32°F. With 60–120 freeze days a year in your county, every unsealed crack runs a freeze-thaw cycle most winter nights — water in, ice expands, crack grows, repeat. Sealing in September, before the first freeze, is the whole point of this task's timing. An unsealed 1/8-inch crack in October is a 1/2-inch crack by March.
The other half of this task is honest liability: a walkway slab lifted an inch by a root or settled at the step is the trip hazard your homeowner's policy hopes you fixed.
What skipping it costs
$300–$12,000
An open crack lets water under the slab. The soil washes, the slab settles, the crack widens — and in freeze country the ice does the same work faster. A $10 tube of sealant in September versus $300 per slab section to lift, or $8,000–$12,000 to repour a driveway that spent five winters drinking. Plus the trip-hazard lawsuit nobody budgets for.
Two ways to get it done
Do it yourself
You'll need: Caulk gun, Wire brush or screwdriver, Shop vac or leaf blower, Concrete/asphalt crack sealant (self-leveling for flat cracks, ~$8–15/tube), Backer rod for cracks over 1/2 inch.
- Walk every paved surface slowly — driveway, walks, patio, steps. Mark cracks wider than a credit card and any slab edge offset enough to catch a toe.
- Clean the cracks you're sealing: wire-brush or scrape out debris and weeds, then vac or blow them out. Sealant needs clean walls to grab.
- Stuff backer rod into anything deeper than a half inch, then run self-leveling sealant for horizontal cracks. Concrete gets concrete sealant, asphalt gets asphalt — the tubes are labeled, and they don't cross over.
- Note where downspouts or grading dump water across or under the pavement — that's the "why" behind most settling, and rerouting a downspout is free compared to lifting a slab.
- Hairline spiderweb cracking? Leave it alone. It's cosmetic, and no product changes that.
Hire it out
$200–$600National fair range — local labor moves this number.
Professional crack-sealing and a condition walk-through runs $200–$600. Where pros genuinely earn their keep is settled slabs: mudjacking or polyfoam lifting raises a sunken section for a fraction of tear-out, usually in an hour, and honest outfits will tell you which slabs are worth lifting versus living with.
The math to hold onto: lifting a section runs a few hundred dollars; repouring a driveway runs five figures. Any contractor whose only tool is a jackhammer will find you a jackhammer-shaped problem — talk to a lifting company before you sign a replacement contract, and make whoever you hire explain where the water that caused it is going next time.
Ask the tech
- Which cracks are structural versus cosmetic — and what makes the difference on mine?
- Is lifting/settling here a soil or drainage problem? Sealing cracks won't fix what's moving the slab.
- For a sunken section: what would mudjacking or foam lifting cost versus tear-out and repour?
Red flags you're being upsold
- Full tear-out quoted for a driveway with settled sections but sound concrete. Slab lifting (mudjacking or poly foam) fixes most settling for a quarter of replacement cost.
- Asphalt sealcoating crews working the neighborhood door-to-door with 'leftover material.' The material is watered down and the crew is gone by Friday.
- Anyone selling driveway work without talking about WHY it moved — water gets under slabs from somewhere, and repouring over the same washout buys you the same crack.
Second opinion time: Any full-replacement quote over $5,000 when the surface is mostly intact — get a slab-lifting outfit to look first; they're different companies with cheaper answers.
The call
DIY the sealing — it's caulk-gun work on your knees, not a trade skill. Hire the lifting if anything's sunk more than an inch.