Nine questions, and the answers tell you more than the price does. Ask any contractor, including us. Two of these matter more in Akron than they would anywhere else in the state.
Sealer arrives as a concentrate and is meant to be cut to a specification. Cut beyond it and the coat goes on easily, looks right for a month, and is gone by the second winter. In a county that puts four months of freeze and salt on a driveway there is nowhere for a thin coat to hide, so this question is worth more here than in a mild market.
A straight answer names the product and the dilution. An answer about proprietary mixes is an answer.
One full strength coat and two thinned ones are not the same job, and the second is easier to sell because it sounds like more. Establish what is included before the number means anything, and whether a second coat is an upsell waiting on the day.
This is the question that matters most in Summit County. Akron-Canton averages 47 inches of snow a year, the snow gets salted, and salted winters open more crack than mild ones. On a lot of Akron driveways the crack work is the larger half of the job.
So a quote that folds it in invisibly is the one most likely to grow on the day, and a quote that leaves it out entirely is quoting a different job than the one your driveway needs. You want it measured by the linear foot and shown as its own line, and you want to know it happens before the sealing rather than instead of it.
A contractor who measured should be able to tell you the square footage they measured and roughly how much crack they counted. One who quoted from the kerb without measuring has given you an opening position, and it only ever moves one way once the truck is in your driveway.
If your drive has fall on it, ask whether that was accounted for. It is slower to seal uphill and the low end is usually in worse condition, so two drives of the same size here genuinely can price differently.
The right answer is that the job moves and the price does not.
Ask about dew specifically if you are booking from September onward. Around here a clear cool night leaves a driveway visibly wet at seven in the morning with no rain anywhere in the forecast, and a crew that starts at first light in October either does not know that or is choosing to ignore it.
Twenty four to forty eight hours, longer late in the season because the cure is temperature driven. An exact window is a better answer than a number, and anyone telling you a few hours in October is telling you something about how the coat will look in spring.
On a residential driveway this is a reasonable thing to ask and a reasonable thing to be told plainly either way.
On anything commercial it is not optional. A lot, a private road, an apartment or condo property: ask for the certificate before the booking rather than the week of the job, and if your management company needs to be named as additional insured, say so at the enquiry because it takes days to process.
You are asking whether there is a business to call in April. A local contractor with a name, a number and other driveways on the same streets has an answer. A crew working out of a truck with material left over from another job does not.
Nobody can promise a coat against a winter that drops four feet of snow. What they can tell you is what they do if the coat fails early, and whether you will be able to find them.
The address, so it can be measured. Cars moved off, including anything sitting on the apron. Sprinklers near the drive off for the day. And a heads up if the drive runs downhill to the garage, because those are worked from the bottom up and it changes how the day is planned.
A knock at the door offering leftover material. The oldest one in the trade and still the most common. No warranty, no business to find in spring.
Cash only, today only, price expiring. Sealing is not an emergency. The driveway will still be there next week.
No measurement. Covered above and worth repeating.
A quote with no crack line on it. In this market that is not a simplification, it is an omission.
Bigger outfits hand a job down a chain. By the time a crew is on your driveway the person who quoted it has no involvement, and the person standing there has no authority to change anything.
What you want to establish is simple. Who quoted it, who you call in April if something is wrong, and whether those are the same person. With us they are. A straight answer to that is worth more than a lower number from somebody who will not give you one.
