Paving Contractor in Marietta, GA

Is your Marietta driveway due for an overlay or a rebuild?

About 43 percent of Marietta's homes are detached houses, and 12 percent are townhomes or other attached houses. Census figures date a third of the city's homes to before 1980. Only about 1 in 10 went up in 2010 or later. That means most driveways in the city already carry years of wear.

On an old driveway, the question is whether the stone base under the asphalt is still sound. If it is, an asphalt overlay puts a new surface over the old one. Sunken spots and alligator cracks, a web of small connected cracks, point to a failed base. Then the fix is a new driveway built from the base up.

Parking lots for Marietta's apartment communities and businesses

Renters live in about 53 percent of Marietta's occupied homes, by Census estimates. About 4 in 10 homes sit in buildings with five or more units. Apartment lots carry cars all day and garbage trucks on pickup days.

The city's 2013 bond and its redevelopment work aim at the Franklin Gateway corridor near I-75. A city planning study also covers the Cobb Parkway (US 41) corridor. Downtown, the city's parking page notes many privately owned paid lots.

On an aging lot, crack filling comes before the sealcoating goes down. Fresh striping goes on last, so drivers can read the spaces again. We can work a busy lot in sections so the business stays open. When an HOA owns its community's streets, we pave those private roads too.

What the Cobb County soil survey says about Marietta ground

The NRCS soil survey for Cobb County maps the Square as urban land mixed with Cecil soil. Gwinnett and Madison soils cover the most ground, with Pacolet and Cecil also common. The survey rates them well drained, with red clay below the topsoil. Many are mapped as eroded, on slopes of 2 to 25 percent.

NOAA's 1991 to 2020 normals give the Atlanta airport about 50 inches of rain a year. The survey also rates these soils limited for local roads and streets because of low strength. When rain soaks in at a driveway's edge, the soft clay lets the asphalt above it sag and break. Asphalt paving on clay starts with grading that sends water off and away, then a compacted stone base.

The city's floodplain page calls severe flooding unlikely in Marietta. The soil survey still marks some creek-bottom soils as subject to flooding. Any new development in a floodplain needs a permit from the city. Where runoff has already broken a drive or lot, asphalt repair and patching rebuilds the failed spot.

Is your Marietta address inside the city limits?

A Marietta mailing address often sits outside the city. In the 2020 Census, about 335,000 people lived in the seven main Marietta ZIP code areas. The city itself counted 60,972. Nearly all the rest live in unincorporated Cobb County.

Inside the city limits, the Building Inspection Division takes permit applications through an online portal. The city's Homeowners Building Permit page shows how to look up an address in an online property search. A tax district of Marietta means the city, and unincorporated means Cobb County. In the downtown historic district, paving along a public right-of-way also needs Historic Board of Review approval.

Outside the city, Cobb DOT must approve a residential driveway that meets a county road. Cobb DOT also notes that a driveway onto a state road needs a GDOT encroachment permit. Cobb Parkway (US 41) is one of those state roads. The office for your address answers the permit question, and we point you there.