Plan your Saturday
- Walk the driveway and mark every defect with chalk.
- Photograph each one — useful for shopping the right products.
- Buy bags of cold mix and tubes of rubberised crack filler.
- Fix cracks first (they cure fast), then patch potholes.
What you need
- Stiff broom and wire brush
- Square-mouth shovel
- Hand tamper (or use your car wheel)
- Cold mix asphalt — 7 Gauge handles most driveway holes
- Rubberised crack filler in caulking-tube format
- Work gloves and safety glasses
Crack repair
Clear each crack with the wire brush. Make sure it's dry. Run a bead of rubberised filler down the length, smooth with a putty knife, and move on. Cure time is 30–60 minutes before foot traffic.
Pothole patching
- Clean and square the hole.
- Pour cold mix in, overfilling by 15%.
- Tamp firmly from the outside in.
- Drive over with the car for final compaction.
- Sweep loose fines off. Done.
Budget guide
A typical residential driveway with three or four potholes and a dozen cracks costs around $200–$300 in materials and four to six hours of weekend labour. The same job done by a contractor with hot mix usually runs $2,000+.
Frequently asked questions
Do I need any special permits?
No — repair to your own driveway requires no permit anywhere in Australia.
What if the driveway is gravel-surfaced?
Gravel driveways are not asphalt — they need a different approach. Cold mix can be used to bind a thin asphalt course over a well-prepared gravel base, but that is a bigger project.
When is DIY not the right call?
If more than a quarter of the driveway is failing, or the base shows obvious instability, get a contractor to assess for resurfacing or reconstruction.
