5 Tips: Extend The Life Of Your Asphalt Pavement

Resurfacing a parking lot or driveway is a large cost that not everyone budgets for. In order to extend the life of your pavement, take a proactive approach and consider doing some Pavement Preventive Maintenance (PPM). The concept behind PPM is to keep your good pavement good and not letting it show signs of deterioration. Even if your pavement shows some signs of deterioration, PPM can help to get a few extra years out of your pavement. Here are some PPM tips that can help you to save both your pavement and hard earned dollars:

Control Load On Your Pavement

Try to have larger vehicles like garbage trucks and delivery trucks access your property only if it is necessary. These heavy vehicles carry a lot of weight and can destroy your pavement in a hurry. Limit their presence on your pavement and you will lessen the amount of load your pavement has to undergo. One way to do this is to move your garbage containers closer to the roadway where garbage trucks can access them without having to drive over your pavement. This is an easy fix and one that you can do yourself.

Fix Drainage Problems

Water is the main reason why pavements fail. If water is allowed to reach the base course underneath your pavement and disrupt it, it will not be long until you will need to fix a newly formed pothole. If you have a lot of standing water on your pavement, call a contractor to see what can be done to fix this problem. Installing a drain inlet or under drain could be the fix you need.

Sweeping/Blowing

Sweeping your parking lot on a regular basis keeps it free from hazards like loose aggregate and glass. Sweeping can also help you to evaluate the condition of your pavement. If your parking lot is not cleaned regularly, debris may hide cracks and damaged asphalt, which could lead to failures that seem to appear suddenly. Have a maintenance person regularly sweep or blow your pavement. If there is a lot of debris, contact a contractor that offers sweeping services.

Crack Filling

If your parking lot has existing cracks, crack filling should be done. Water can enter these cracks at gallons per minute and all that water will wash away your investment. Crack fill can be bought at stores in the Honolulu area and you can install it yourself. If there are a lot of cracks, contact a contractor to install.

seal coating

seal coating seals the surface of your asphalt, protecting it from the elements and preventing water seepage. Elements that cause your pavement to become oxidized and brittle include oxygen, moisture and UV rays.

A sealcoated surface also looks great. It has a rich, dark black color compared to oxidized pavement which is gray. You can tell in the above picture which side of the parking lot has a sealcoat and which side does not.

Sealcoat material can be purchased and installed yourself. However, there are many sealcoat materials out there and all of them are not the same. If you are looking at a large area to cover, seal coating out of buckets may be too labor intensive and contacting a contractor with the equipment to install may be a better option.

These are just a few tips on how to extend the life of your asphalt pavement. Depending on the scope of the work, these tips may be easy enough to “do-it-yourself.” But don’t wait to get started on Pavement Preventative Maintenance!