Crack Sealing in Minnesota
Seal Cracks Now Before They Turn Into Potholes
The American Concrete Institute reports that water is responsible for more than 70% of all pavement failure. And water does not get into your asphalt from the top down through a solid surface. It gets in through cracks. Every crack in your driveway or parking lot, no matter how thin it looks right now, is an open channel that directs rainwater, snowmelt, and sprinkler runoff straight through your asphalt surface and into the base material underneath.
Once water reaches the base layer, the damage accelerates in ways that are completely invisible from the surface. The base material softens and shifts. The asphalt above it loses support from below. Traffic loads that the pavement handled fine when it had a solid base suddenly cause surface depression, alligatoring, and eventually potholes. By the time a pothole forms, the structural damage beneath it typically extends 3 to 4 feet in every direction beyond the visible hole. You are not patching a pothole at that point. You are rebuilding a section of pavement.
Minnesota makes this problem dramatically worse than it would be in a warmer climate. Minnesota experiences more than 100 freeze and thaw cycles annually, and each cycle physically forces cracks open wider. Water enters the crack. Temperatures drop. The water freezes and expands by up to 9% in volume inside the crack, wedging the crack walls apart with tremendous force. The ice thaws and retreats, leaving a crack that is slightly wider than it was before. The next freeze repeats the process. Over a single Minnesota winter, a hairline crack can become a quarter inch gap. Over two winters without treatment, that same crack can reach half an inch and begin to show spalling along its edges.
Most homeowners see a small crack, whether it means sealing cracks in a driveway or a parking lot, and decide to deal with it later. Later comes with a much larger bill. The Minnesota Department of Transportation’s own pavement research indicates that untreated cracks left through even one additional winter season increase full repair costs by an average of 40%. The crack does not wait for you to be ready. It grows on its own schedule, driven by water and cold, all winter long.
Not all crack filler is the same, and the difference in performance between what Johnson Sealcoating uses and what you can buy at a hardware store is not small. Consumer grade cold pour crack filler is a petroleum based liquid that you pour into a crack and allow to cure. It adheres reasonably well when temperatures are moderate and the crack is not moving. But asphalt cracks are never stable in Minnesota. They open and close with temperature changes throughout every season. Cold pour filler does not have the flexibility to handle that movement, and it fails, typically within one or two seasons, leaving the crack open again or in some cases wider than before because the failed filler has broken the crack edges.
Johnson Sealcoating uses hot applied rubberized crack sealant, the same specification and material standard used by the Minnesota Department of Transportation on state roads and highways. Hot applied sealant is heated to a precise working temperature and then applied into the cleaned crack, where it bonds aggressively to both crack walls and forms a waterproof, flexible seal that moves with the asphalt through temperature extremes. It does not become brittle in cold weather. It does not soften and flow out of the crack in summer heat. It stays in place and stays sealed through multiple freeze and thaw cycles because it was designed specifically for that purpose.
Studies from the Minnesota Department of Transportation show that properly applied hot rubberized asphalt crack sealing extends pavement service life by 3 to 5 years on average and reduces pothole formation probability by more than 50%. That is not a marginal improvement. That is the difference between a maintenance schedule and a replacement timeline.
Before any filler touches your asphalt, we rout or clean the crack to remove loose material, old failed filler, and any vegetation that has worked its way in. A crack sealed over debris or old filler will not hold. Preparation is what makes the seal last. We then apply the hot rubberized material in a controlled pass, slightly overfilling the crack to ensure full penetration to the crack base, then level the surface for a clean finish. Any crack sealing or sealing driveway cracks done before a sealcoating service is completed first so that the sealer bonds over a sealed surface rather than an open gap.
Crack sealing is most effective when cracks are between an eighth of an inch and three quarters of an inch wide. Narrower cracks can be addressed with a surface sealer. Wider cracks indicate deeper structural issues that we will assess honestly and discuss with you before recommending a course of action.
10 Years of Minnesota Crack Sealing Experience Behind Every Job
Kurtis Johnson has been sealing cracks in Minnesota asphalt for over a decade. He knows the difference between a surface crack that needs sealing and a reflection crack that signals base failure. He knows which products perform in Minnesota’s climate and which ones fail by the following spring. And he will tell you honestly what your asphalt actually needs rather than selling you a service your pavement does not require.
As a family owned and operated business, Johnson Sealcoating’s reputation depends on every single job delivering real, lasting results. We do not cut corners on materials and we do not rush preparation. Every crack sealing job we complete is done the way we would do it on our own property.