Seminole County is the northern edge of the service area, from Altamonte Springs and Longwood up to Sanford on Lake Monroe, and east to Oviedo and Winter Springs. It is a smaller county than Orange, split off from it in 1913, and it has its own rules at the curb. This page covers the towns, the water, and exactly what the county asks for when a driveway meets a county road.
Sanford, Lake Mary, Longwood, Altamonte Springs, Casselberry, Winter Springs and Oviedo, and the unincorporated neighborhoods around Heathrow, Fern Park, Chuluota and Geneva. Sanford is the county seat and the largest city. If your address is in the county and the town is not named, send it anyway.
About a tenth of the county is water. The St. Johns River runs along the county and widens into Lake Monroe at Sanford. Lake Jesup sits between Sanford, Winter Springs and Oviedo, and the Wekiva River runs along the western side.
Low ground near that much water stays damp. In neighborhoods close to the lakes and the river, the sand under a driveway can hold water well after a storm has passed, and a drive with no fall to it holds puddles on top as well. Both soften the ground an asphalt edge depends on. Before a paving or repair job here, the first question is where the water goes, and the second is whether the base under the asphalt is still carrying the load.
Sanford grew as a celery farming town long before it became a suburb, and the low, level ground that suited celery is the same ground its older streets are built on.
The county grew because it sits between Orange and Volusia with Interstate 4 running through it, and most of the growth is suburban. That produces a wide spread of driveway ages on one map. Older, narrower drives in historic Sanford and around the older parts of Longwood. Subdivisions along SR 434 and SR 436 in Altamonte Springs, Casselberry and Winter Springs, where whole streets were built together and tend to fail together at the same joints. And newer communities around Lake Mary, Heathrow and along the SR 417 corridor toward Oviedo, many of them under association rules.
In the older neighborhoods the usual faults are roots and tight edges. In the subdivisions it is the joint against the garage slab and the seam at the apron. In the newest communities it is more often a drive that is simply too young to seal, which we say rather than sell.
Where a driveway connects to a county-owned road in unincorporated Seminole County, the county issues a residential driveway permit, and its application sets out specific rules for the part that sits in the public right-of-way:
In practice that means an asphalt driveway in unincorporated Seminole County stops at the right-of-way, and the apron beyond it is a concrete job under the county permit. Inside the cities, the city's own rules apply. Oviedo, for example, does not need a building permit for a driveway on private property, but any driveway or sidewalk work in the right-of-way needs a right-of-way permit from its Engineering department.
Not on a county road in unincorporated Seminole County. The county's standard for the part in the right-of-way is six inch concrete, or pavers outside the sidewalk crossing. Inside a city, it depends on that city.
Sealing stays on private property and is not right-of-way work. Oviedo lists driveways on private property among work that does not need a building permit.
It can be. A low end that never dries softens the base and is where the drive will fail first. It is looked at before any sealing is quoted.
Neighbouring counties: Orange to the south and Lake to the west, with Osceola beyond Orange.
