Delaware County starts where West Philadelphia stops, at Cobbs Creek, and runs west to Media and down to the river. Upper Darby and Drexel Hill are packed close to the city line, and the townships further out are older, greener and hillier. The rules at the street change at every township line, and here they are, as each township publishes them.
Upper Darby Township, including Drexel Hill, Highland Park and Aronimink; Haverford Township, including Havertown, Brookline and the Haverford side of Ardmore; Media and Springfield; Clifton Heights, Lansdowne and Yeadon; Broomall and Marple; Radnor, Wayne and Villanova; Swarthmore; and the river towns from Ridley to Prospect Park. If yours is not listed, ask.
Delaware County drains south through a row of parallel creeks: Cobbs Creek on the city line, Darby Creek, Crum Creek past Swarthmore, and Ridley Creek below Media. Between them the land rises and falls in long ridges, and the older towns were built along the ridge roads, West Chester Pike, Baltimore Pike and the roads out of Upper Darby. The Blue Route, I-476, now cuts north to south through the middle.
What that means on a driveway is slope in one direction or another almost everywhere, and downhill ends that collect water. Near the creek valleys the ground can stay damp into the spring, and a damp base under a thin driveway is where the plate-shaped cracking that signals a failed base tends to start.
Upper Darby and Drexel Hill. Street after street of twins and rows on narrow lots, with drives either shared between the two halves of a twin or running down the side to a garage at the back. A shared side drive between twins has the same problem as a shared rear driveway in the city: two owners, one surface, and water that flows from one half onto the other.
Haverford and the Main Line edge. Older single houses with mature trees, stone walls and garages set well back. Longer drives, lots of shade, and roots.
Media and the western townships. A walkable borough center with rear lots and alleys, then larger lots in Marple, Springfield and beyond, where drives are longer and sit in the sun.
In every one of these, the permit is about the apron, the curb and the sidewalk, the strip the public walks on. Sealing and crack filling a driveway behind that line are not listed as permit work on any of the township pages above. Apron work is quoted with the permit named and the current fee included.
Haverford spells out a rule many owners here live with: sidewalks in front of a property have to be cleared within 24 hours of a storm, and snow cleared from private property may not be pushed into the street, the sidewalk or an alley. On a narrow lot that leaves one place for it, the edges of the driveway. A pile that sits along the edge for a week melts by day, runs back across the drive and freezes again at night, in the same strip, over and over.
That strip is where we most often find the first cracks on drives in the older townships, along with the corner where the shovel or the blower chips the edge. Filling those before the season and keeping the edge sealed is the cheap part. If the edge has already broken away into the lawn, the quote will say it needs rebuilding, not sealing.
We can, and the quote will say where the join will be. Doing the full width together usually wears better and costs each house less, so we will price both.
That strip needs a Haverford Public Works permit. The fee goes on the quote alongside the repair.
Yes, Ridley, Prospect Park, Folcroft and the towns along I-95 are all in range.
Next door: Philadelphia across Cobbs Creek, Montgomery County to the north.
