Suffolk is the largest city in Virginia by land area, about 400 square miles, and most of it looks like the county it used to be. Long drives, ditches, culverts and fields, with a historic downtown and the newer neighbourhoods of the north end. It also has the most detailed driveway permit of the five cities we cover.
Downtown, Harbour View, Sleepy Hole, Chuckatuck, Driver, Kings Fork, Holy Neck, Holland, Whaleyville and the roads between them. Farm lanes, church lots, business lots and homes.
Today's Suffolk was formed in 1974 when the old city consolidated with Nansemond County and the towns of Holland and Whaleyville. Nansemond had itself become a city only in 1972, the shortest-lived independent city in Virginia's history. Planters Peanuts was established in Suffolk beginning in 1912, and the peanut fields are still part of the landscape.
Because Hampton Roads cities maintain their own roads, even a farm lane that meets a rural route in Holy Neck is entering a city road, so the entrance permit comes from the city rather than from the state.
The Nansemond River begins in downtown Suffolk and runs about twenty miles to the James, fresh near the city and brackish by the mouth. Part of the Great Dismal Swamp lies in the south of the city. I-664 leaves Suffolk for Newport News over the Monitor-Merrimac Memorial Bridge-Tunnel, and US-13, US-17, US-58 and US-460 all pass through.
Inland means colder. Over 1991 to 2020 the weather station at Lake Kilby averaged about 56 nights a year at or below freezing, against about 41 at Norfolk's airport. Those extra frosts are extra chances for water in an open crack to freeze and widen it, which makes crack filling before winter worth more here than on the coast.
So an apron replacement in Suffolk is never a job for next Tuesday. We build the permit lead time into the schedule and the fee into the quote. Sealing the drive behind the apron does not wait on it.
Plenty of Suffolk homes sit at the end of a single long drive, with no second way to the road. Sealer needs a day or two before cars go back on it, so a long drive like that is planned before anyone arrives: sealed one half of its width at a time, or in two stages from the house end out, so there is always a way to get a car out. The plan goes on the quote with the dates.
The edges of a country drive take the most punishment. They sit on soft shoulders beside a ditch, with nothing holding them up, and every vehicle that pulls over to pass another breaks a little more away. Filling the cracks along the edge and keeping the edge sealed slows that down. Where the edge has already crumbled into the ditch, it needs rebuilding with a firm shoulder rather than another coat.
Heavy loads matter too. A loaded farm or delivery truck on a warm day can rut a drive that was built for cars. A seal coat protects the surface but adds no strength, so a drive that carries that kind of weight regularly may need a thicker section at the entrance.
Suffolk's rule for its Chesapeake Bay Preservation Areas is blunt: all new development has to be outside the 100 foot Resource Protection Area buffer, with exceptions only for water-dependent facilities and shoreline erosion control. A new drive to a riverfront lot on the Nansemond is planned around that line.
The city's stormwater unit is 3,039 square feet of impervious area at $7.50 a month, and single-family homes pay one unit whatever their driveway. The fee also funds the city's mosquito control.
At least the city's 14 business days for the permit, plus the seven days' notice before work. Call it a month to be safe.
Often, because the longer the drive, the more a crack left open costs to fix later. It is measured and priced the same way as any other.
Yes. Send the address.
Next door: Chesapeake to the east, Portsmouth to the northeast.
