Depth over demolition
The case for the second lift
Asphalt fails from the top down: sun oxidizes the binder, water finds the hairlines, and the top lift ravels while the eight inches under it carry trucks without complaint. Replacement answers a question nobody asked — the base is fine — at a price that eats a reserve fund. Mill and overlay answers the actual failure: the failed lift comes off cold, the base gets read while it is bare, and the new mat goes back to the same grade, so every gutter, curb and door threshold still meets the pavement exactly where it did.
Five years on the lift
The new wearing course is warranted for five years against raveling, stripping and reflection of what was milled off — and the warranty is written against the milling log and the depth readings in your close-out file, so it survives an audit instead of hiding from one. A lift that fails inside five years is re-milled and re-laid at our cost, and the lot’s stripes are the last thing back, as they were the first time.
Services
The renewal index
01
Milling — the failed lift comes off
A cold planer takes the top forty to fifty millimetres in one clean pass, full width of the lane, with the spoils loading straight to trucks and not one bucket spilled on a stall. The edge is feathered where the new mat meets manholes and valve boxes, and every casting gets adjusted to the grade the new lift will find.
02
Tack & the new course
A uniform tack coat bonds the new lift to the old base — skipped by cheap crews and mourned by everyone who ever drove a lane that delaminated in August. Then forty millimetres of dense-graded mix, laid to stringline, compacted behind the roller to the density the core will prove.
03
Butt joints & transitions
The seam where new mat meets old gutter is where a renewal is won or lost: joints are cut square, tacked and butted, then diamond-ground where a machine cannot reach, so the transition is one a tire cannot find. Every apron, ramp and walk-on finds its match line drawn before the paver starts.
04
Stripes, stalls & the close-out
The layout goes back the way it came off — or better, if the tenant has been asking for a stall — with fresh markings the same week. The close-out file carries the milling depth, the tonnage, the core density and the joint map: the renewal, on paper, for whoever owns the lot next.
How the renewal runs
One lot, one weekend
Friday night — mill
The planer runs while the lot is empty. By Saturday breakfast the failed lift is gone, the base is swept and read, and any patch the bare base confessed to is already cut and filled.
Saturday — tack & lay
Tack at first light, the paver behind it by nine, rollers behind the paver. A forty-thousand-square-foot lot is matted by dark, and the tenant’s Saturday traffic never met a cone.
Sunday — joints & castings
Butt joints cut and sealed, manholes and valves set to the new grade, transitions ground where the machine left its signature. The lot is swept twice and opened by Sunday supper.
The week — stripes & file
Markings back in the first dry window, and the close-out file lands in the property manager’s inbox before the invoice does: depths, tonnage, cores, joints, and the five-year warranty keyed to all of it.
The interchange estates, 2025 — 2026
Lots we renewed
Six renewals from last season — the milled, the matted and the striped, photographed before the stripes were even dry.
The depth report
Every renewal closes with the same four figures, and the file they live in is the reason the warranty means something.
Two paving companies told us the lot was done and quoted a tear-out with a number that ended the meeting. Wearcourse milled the top off, matched every gutter, and the tenants never lost a space for more than a weekend. Four years on it still sheds the February thaw.
Our depot lane was a pothole museum and the board had priced a full reconstruction. Wearcourse read the base while it was bare after milling, said what they found — two soft spots, patched same day — and laid the new mat to the dock level so the trucks do not bump the plate. The close-out file is the tidiest document this depot has ever filed.
They renewed a lot we had resurfaced twice with the overlay-only kind of crew, and the difference was the milling: the failed layer actually left. The puddle lane drains now, the stripes went back the way we asked, and the invoice matched the tonnage on the depth report to the yard.
Fair questions
What owners ask first
The five every estimate call reaches within a minute. The sixth — “can you do it without closing?” — is answered by the weekend schedule above.
How do I know my base is actually good?
The milling pass answers it in the most honest way available: the failed lift comes off and the base sits bare under a broom and a straightedge. Soft spots, full-depth cracks and failed patches declare themselves while fixing them is still cheap — a cut-and-patch the same day, not a claim eighteen months later. You get the photographs either way, and the depth report names every repair in it.
Why mill instead of just laying overlay on top?
Overlay-only is the tempting quote: cheaper, faster, and it raises every grade the pavement meets — gutters, curbs, door thresholds, the bottom of every ramp. Milling buys back the forty millimetres the new lift needs, so the lot finishes at the level it started at and every casting and gutter still works. Overlay-on-top also seals the old failures under a new mat, where they print through in a season. We do overlay-only where it genuinely fits and say so; we just do not sell it as what it is not.
How thick is the new surface?
Forty millimetres of dense-graded mix over a uniform tack coat — thick enough to carry traffic and shed water, thin enough to leave the grades intact. Heavy-traffic lots and turning pads sometimes justify two lifts, and we show the core math when they do. What we never do is thin the lift to win a quote: a thirty-millimetre mat is a raveling schedule wearing a nicer invoice.
Can the business stay open through it?
Almost always, and that is why the sequence runs nights and weekends. Milling Friday night, mat Saturday, joints Sunday, stripes in the first dry window — a forty-thousand-square-foot lot typically loses a weekend and not a weekday. Phased lots keep a lane open the whole time, and the phasing plan is drawn before the quote is signed so the tenants’ notice goes out with real dates.
What does renewal cost against replacement?
Roughly a third to a half of tear-out-and-replace, because the base — the expensive eight inches — stays and keeps working. The honest comparison needs one caveat: a lot with a failed base should be rebuilt, and our depth report will say so rather than sell a new top over a broken foundation. Around the interchange estates, roughly one lot in five we read gets the rebuild recommendation. The other four keep their reserve fund.
Estimates
Price the lift
Send the address and the rough square footage — we read the lot, name the failure honestly, and return a per-square-foot renewal number with the phasing plan attached. If the base is the problem, the report says that too, before anybody signs anything. mill@wearcourse.example