Tar And Chip Driveway Video

Tar and Chip Video Transcript

Oh, you know the two most common driveway materials here in the tri-state area are blacktop and even concrete. You see them all the time but to me, they're kind of plain vanilla.

If you want a driveway that is drop-dead gorgeous, durable and built the way roadways we're done 70 years ago, you want a driveway like mine. A tar and chip driveway.

The way you install a tar and chip driveway is really simple. You just need to bring liquid asphalt cement to the job site. It's pretty hot. It's about 350 degrees so you have to be careful. You can get burned by it and they spray it onto your driveway and it's about 3/8 to a quarter of an inch thick. And into that hot tar, they dump gravel chips. It can be brown gravel that's beautiful. You can also get gray gravel and if you come up with any different color that you can think of they'll put it into the tar.

The tar really doesn't care what goes into it. It's very important that they put just enough tar down. If you put too much the tar can actually ooze through the surface and cause a problem on hot summer days. But I've never seen it happen with the different companies that I use to install my tar and chip surfaces.

You probably want to know what the tar and chip surface looks like up close and personal. That's a good point. I have a light loose coating of these brown stones on my drive. But look here. This is exactly what it looks like if I brush them away. These brown stones are firmly locked into the tar and it basically looks not much different than a standard blacktop roadway or driveway.

And it provides excellent traction in the wintertime and if you do want to plow the tar and chip driveway, it’s not a problem. Just tell your snowplow operator to hold that blade up about one-inch and he won't push any of the stones off of your driveway.

If you want a tar and chip driveway go ahead and open up your yellow pages (this video was recorded before the Internet search engines were popular), start calling around the different blacktop contractors. if you're really lucky you just might find one that still knows how to do a tar and chip surface. I'm Tim Carter, Ask the Builder. If you want to discover more home improvement tips, go to AsktheBuilder.com

Related Links

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Step-by-Step Tar and Chip Installation Method

CLICK HERE to get FREE QUOTES from local companies that can do chip seal and tar and chip.