The surprisingly reasonable installation cost of asphalt pavement as opposed to concrete puts property owners in a position to spread out maintenance cost over a twenty or thirty year time frame. Over time most roadways and driveways need asphalt maintenance to keep them in usable condition. The biggest enemies to pavement are water and the sun. Cracks in driveways can allow water to enter the road base layer and begin to wash away the compacted base that provides the foundation for the driving surface. If asphalt pavement is neglected too long, the water damage eventually leads to pot holes and large areas of road failure. Keeping the water out of the base is the primary function of Sealcoating and pavement maintenance. Sealcoating is the
We know how important it is for a brick and mortar business to have a functional and safe parking area for their customers. Neglecting cracks or potholes will cause them to grow rapidly, possibly doing damage to a customer's vehicle. Fixing them quickly is an economical way to enhance the appearance and prolong the life of your parking lot or driveway.
Once all the cracks in your driveway are filled in, you can have a top coat applied. This sealcoating restores the dark color to the asphalt and covers up the repair work. To keep your driveway looking its best, and to prevent further damage, you may wish to have a sealcoat applied to your driveway every couple of years as routine
You can make your sealcoating on your driveway last longer if you take care to prepare your cement before the job starts, make sure the contractors do a good job, and be careful while the sealcoating is
Have any breaks in the pavement repaired quickly. Cracks, deep cuts and potholes can let water drain beneath the pavement and erode the foundation. Once the foundation has become eroded and unstable, the pavement loses its ability to flex under load and extensive cracking can occur.
Since your driveway is one of the first things people see when driving up to your house, you want to keep it looking as nice as possible. If you neglect your driveway, it will develop cracks, stains, and potholes that get worse over time. It's best to make repairs when the damage is in the early stages. Also, you should consider sealcoating the asphalt every few years to protect it from damage and to restore its dark color. You can hire a contractor to apply the sealcoat, but if your driveway is short and in good shape, you may be able to do the job yourself. Here's what the process entails.
If you had a new asphalt driveway installed recently, you probably love its dark color and smooth surface. You can tell by looking at other driveways that the beauty of a new drive doesn't last forever. Exposure to the sun, rain, heavy vehicles, and temperature extremes causes fading and cracking. Wear and tear is inevitable, but with proper maintenance, you can keep your driveway looking nice and extend its life. Here are some things you can hire a contractor to do or do yourself.
The asphalt is applied on top of the subgrade, so this part of the driveway has to be stable. If the soil is too soft, it can shift and cause cracks to develop in the asphalt. The base has to be cleared and compacted first. Then, the area is checked for areas of loose or soft soil. If any are found, the soft areas must be filled in until the base is sturdy. Once that's done, a new layer is added to the
It may seem harmless, but small cracks can turn into large cracks, and they usually do. When this happens, you will need a major repair. Large cracks penetrate deep into your asphalt surface, and they will require an asphalt repair. Small cracks can be fixed using the same material used for sealcoating. A repair like this will not look pretty, but it will prevent the problem from getting worse. However, small cracks are a sign that you need to have a new sealcoating done, so it is usually best to go ahead and have this done.
Brief Description: My apartment parking lot is littered with large cracks in the surface. Some are new, some have been covered the cement, and are re-cracking again. This is caused by water filling the cracks, and in cold weather the water turns to ice, and stretches the crack to its new limits. My apartment floods with low amounts of rain, so I am assuming there are so many cracks because of the amount of water that is retained on the property.
The condition of our roads the past couple summers has been pretty poor. Many of the main streets are filled with large pot holes and loose
Heavy cracks often appear in asphalt, a problem which can significantly decrease the curb value of your home. One of the most destructive of these crack type is alligator cracking. Identifying this problem and taking steps to remedy it can help you get your driveway looking as good as new.
It doesn’t seem fair those with chip-and-seal don’t pay to maintain their roads, Hanlon added. Because of the longevity of concrete roads, those property owners will likely not face road assessments either.
Through an online website by the name of GIZMODO, I learned the reason why American roads are often riddled with potholes. When freshly paved roads are not perfectly sealed, there is an increased chance that water in one form or another will make its way beneath the asphalt; there it will stay, existing in a small gap between the pavement and the road’s base. Then, it’s only a matter of time before the driving of big trucks over the water pockets turn the spots into actual potholes.
According to the Federal Highway Administration, 73 million tons of reclaimed asphalt pavement is reused every year. This is twice as much as paper, glass, aluminum and plastics combined. Many may not know that asphalt is 100% recyclable and that producing new asphalt actually has a greater impact on the environment than recycled asphalt. By recycling asphalt, you reduce the cost of making virgin asphalt, the disposal of old asphalt, and unwanted labor. It cost $78 per ton to produce virgin asphalt, but when using recycled asphalt, you are saving $30 to $80 per ton. Therefore, if a contractor is recycling 50 tons a day for 30 days, then he will have a savings of $90,000 (Asphalt Recycling). So not only does recycling asphalt reduces the cost of production and the disposal of asphalt, it also reduces the impact it has on the environment. As mentioned before, when recycling asphalt, you are reducing the cost of its disposal, which in this case, you are keeping 75 million tons of material out of U.S. landfills. Those 75 million tons of material is comparable to using 13,500 Olympic sized pools for the disposal of unwanted asphalt, according to figure X. So it is important to imagine how much
There are also things caused by asphalt that will affect us long term. The production of asphalt releases 1.6 million tons of carbon into the air every year. In order to take that amount of carbon out of the air, it would take 1,311,475 acres of forests, which is more than double the size of Rhode Island. If we’re going to attack climate change, and help recover the environmental damage we’ve treated Earth with over the years, we have to do take substantial steps, that may change the way our society