But it all depends on how much tarmac you need to lay.
tamping cold mix asphalt
When your driveway was first constructed, it would have been built using a hot mix tarmac. This hot product should not really be called tarmac. The word tarmac comes from tarmacadam, back in the day when aggregates were mixed with tar. Tar is no longer used.
Now we use bitumen and the hot mix is called either bituminous concrete or asphaltic concrete. This mix is produced in sophisticated plants and at temperatures of in excess of 140 degrees centigrade. So transporting and laying it is a specialized task which is best left to the many paving companies.
But when you need to do a bit of tarmac repair to your driveway and you don’t want to call in the experts, then cold lay tarmac could be the answer for you. Before you decide not to engage a professional paving company you need to determine how big the tarmac repair job is likely to be.
If it’s only a few cracks or a couple of small holes or depressions or some other small tarmac repair then you would be well advised to tackle the project by yourself. Calling in the professionals for a small job would be quite expensive especially as they would more than likely opt to use hot mix. It’s very expensive transporting half a ton or so in a big lorry and then having a gang of men laying it. Much better to do it yourself.
And doing it yourself is where the cold lay tarmac comes in. For small jobs this stuff is ideal. You can buy it in 25kg bags and once you open the bag you can use the product. No need to heat it or add anything else.
Most driveways will have about a 50mm or 2 inch thickness of tarmac surface. If you need to patch a pothole in it a 25kg tarmac repair bag, at that sort of depth, will cover roughly an area of 0.20 square metres (0.450 x 0.450). At around thirty pounds a bag this makes the cost of the material out to be around one hundred and fifty pounds a square metre.
Hot mix asphalt will cost you around forty to fifty pounds a tonne plus delivery, and for small loads delivery can be very expensive. A tonne at 50mm thick will cover about 8 square metres but to get that tonne delivered could cost you anything up to one hundred and fifty pounds. And if you are not going to do the job yourself there is the added cost of getting a paving contractor to do the job for you.
The bottom line really is that any repair over 2 square metres is cheaper to do using hot mix and that would include using a paving company to do it for you. For less than 2 square metres cold lay tarmac prices are more cost effective as long as you are prepared to do the job yourself.