What the box does
Three rescues, one verdict
Every visit ends in one of three calls, made on your driveway with a core sample if the story is unclear. The call is written down before anything is heated, routed or ordered.
The infrared blend — $3.15 / sq ft
The heater box takes the top two inches of your existing mat past 300 °F, new mix is folded through it, and the whole area is re-rolled — one continuous surface with no saw joint and no square scar. For alligatoring and lifted edges over sound base. 150 sq ft minimum.
The rout & fill — $2.60 / lin ft
Thermal cracks chased with a router to a half-inch channel, blown clean with compressed air, and sealed hot with the rubber left recessed below grade — so the repair survives the plow, the snowblower and the shovel, not just the summer. The cheapest pavement dollar that exists.
The level-up — from $340
A thin leveling course for birdbaths and dips that hold water but have not cracked through: tacked, screeded thin and rolled flush. Cheap, fast, and honest about what it is — a way to move water off a mat that has years left in it.
Why reheat beats cut-and-patch
A seam is a leak waiting for winter
A saw-cut patch is a new piece of driveway stitched to the old one, and the stitch is a straight channel to the base. Water enters, freezes, and pry-bars the joint open a little more every thaw — which is why patch scars read like scars for fifteen years. The blend has no joint: your mat and the repair are the same continuous material, so there is nothing to open. When the failure goes deeper than two inches we say so and quote the saw-cut — over a failed base, a blend is paint on a broken canvas.
2025 — 2026
The rescue wall
Six rescues from the last two seasons. Half of them were quoted as tear-outs by somebody else first — the verdict sheet for each is in the truck.
How it goes
A rescue, start to finish
The same sequence on every job — the only variable is your project.
Visit one
The verdict
Tape, tap-test and a core where the story is unclear. You leave with one of three written calls — blend, rout, or saw-cut — and the price of each from the card. Nobody heats anything on speculation.
Morning
Heat & soften
The box goes down over the marked area and takes the top two inches of existing mat past 300 °F — roughly a quarter hour, watched, while the rejuvenator is worked into the surface.
Mid-morning
Fold & screed
Fresh hot mix is folded through the softened mat until the blend is one material, then screeded flush with the surrounding surface. This is the step a patch can never imitate.
Noon
Re-roll & check
The area is compacted as part of the whole — density checked at the edges especially, because the edge of a blend is where the old failure used to live.
Handback
Walk it together
You walk it before we load the box: no seam to find, no lip to catch a shovel, and a cure card with the dates on it. The rescue goes in the book with a photo and its next seal year.
Rescued, not replaced
Two outfits told us the driveway was done and quoted a full rebuild. Coldpatch cored it, said the base was fine and the top two inches were the whole problem, and blended 400 square feet of alligatoring in a morning. A year later I genuinely cannot find the edge of the repair — I have tried, on my hands and knees, to show a neighbour.
When is infrared the wrong answer?
When the failure goes through the mat and into the base — pumping under traffic, rutting, a corner that sinks after every rain. Reheating the top two inches of a failed structure is paint on a broken canvas; that job gets saw-cut to sound edges, base rebuilt and hot mix in two lifts. The core decides which one you are holding, not the budget.
How deep does the reheat actually go?
About two inches — the wearing course. That is by design: the box softens the layer that failed, folds new binder-rich mix through it, and leaves the structure below untouched. It is the right depth for the failures that live in the surface and the wrong tool for anything deeper, which the verdict sheet says in writing.
Will the blended patch match after a few winters?
It weathers as one surface, because it is one — same material continuum, same oxidation. A fresh blend looks darker than the surrounding mat for a season, the way any new mix does; by the first sealcoat you will not be able to point at it, and neither will the person buying your house.
Do you work in winter?
Routing and filling on dry days above freezing, yes — the hot rubber needs the crack dry, not the world warm. Blends need the mat itself to take the heat, so the box runs spring through fall. The calendar for both is the shop book, and winter is when we walk verdicts for spring.
The four regulars
Asked at the tailgate
If yours is not here, the shop line runs seven to five and the person on it has run the box, the router or the screed on a drive like yours — usually all three.
Verdict visits inside 48 hours in Ferrow Park and Sable Terrace · (555) 043-5501 · rescue@coldpatchpaving.example
Send the scars, get the verdict
Rough size, age, and what the surface does when it rains. The verdict visit is free, the call is written before anything is heated, and the card is the invoice. rescue@coldpatchpaving.example