Asphalt Sealcoating in Fortville, IN
Fortville is the Hancock County town in Vernon Township where U.S. 36 and State Road 67 run together toward Pendleton and State Road 13 heads north to Lapel. It was platted in 1849 and named for Cephas Fort, the original owner of the town site. It is also growing fast. The 2020 Census counted 4,784 residents, up from 3,929 in 2010, an increase of more than a fifth in ten years, and a good share of the town's driveways arrived with that growth.
Census estimates show about one Fortville home in five built since 2010, alongside the roughly 15 percent of housing that predates 1940. About four in five homes are single-family detached houses, most with a driveway of their own. Those two groups need different things. An older lot needs its base checked before sealer is worth paying for. A newer subdivision drive needs its cracks filled early and a first coat while the surface is still tight, when maintenance is prevention rather than repair.
Young asphalt on wet Hancock County till
Hancock County's 1978 USDA soil survey mentions Fortville in its descriptions of two soils, Crosby silt loam and Brookston silty clay loam. Crosby is somewhat poorly drained and Brookston very poorly drained, and for both the survey names wetness as the main limitation, the kind farmers handle with tile and surface drains. A driveway built over either sits on a base that is slow to dry after rain and snowmelt. A wet base is exactly what a central Indiana winter of freezing and thawing pulls apart, one crossing of the freezing line at a time.
Traffic supplies the salt. U.S. 36 and State Road 67 are INDOT routes, and INDOT pre-treats its highways with salt brine from mid-November to mid-March, so chloride rides home on tires to Fortville driveways all winter. A new subdivision drive handles that well if its surface is sealed and its cracks are closed; an unsealed surface that has already grayed lets it soak in. The sensible pattern for newer drives is a first coat once the asphalt has cured, then an annual round of crack filling and a new coat every few years, the rhythm an asphalt maintenance plan follows.
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Asphalt Sealcoating Services Available in Fortville
Every service we offer in Anderson is available to Fortville homeowners and businesses at the same pricing:
- Driveway Sealcoating
- Hot Rubber Crack Filling
- Asphalt Patching & Pothole Repair
- Parking Lot Sealcoating
- Line Striping & Layout
- Asphalt Maintenance Plans
See the full pricing guide for typical ranges.
Fortville FAQs
How soon can a driveway in one of Fortville's newer subdivisions take its first sealcoat?
After the asphalt has cured, and not before. Fresh asphalt carries oils that need to work out of the surface, and a coat laid over them too early tends to stay soft and scuff under tires. That usually means letting a new drive go through a full warm season first. After that, sooner beats later: a Fortville drive laid in the last few years has a tight surface and nothing to repair, and that is when a coat does the most good for the money. The paving contractor can say when the drive was finished.
Does Fortville's town code apply when a driveway is resealed or widened?
Resealing and crack filling leave a driveway the way it is. Widening or rebuilding it is different. Section 155.04 of the town code says no driveway may be established, reconstructed or removed without first meeting its access standards, and it holds a single- or multi-family driveway to between nine and 16 feet wide at the public road right-of-way. An owner hoping to widen the apron while a paving crew is on site should check with the town before the work is scheduled.
What does the rocky ground southeast of Fortville mean for fixing a wet driveway?
The county soil survey notes that from southwest of Maxwell to southeast of Fortville, large rocks make tiling difficult. The usual cure for a driveway edge that stays soft is getting water away from it, and on that ground a buried drain line can be harder to install than the flat surface suggests. So surface fixes come first there: regrading so water runs off the pavement, sending downspouts away from the drive, and keeping cracks filled so rain never reaches the base.