Asphalt Before / After Repairs
Asphalt Sealer protects your investment in your commercial property’s asphalt parking lots and driveways. It extends the life of the asphalt by slowing oxidation, shielding against salt damage, preventing water penetration and it acting as a barrier against oil and gas spills.
Why Seal Coating is Important
Seal coating can save you real dollars. Unsealed pavements typically require repairs starting with the second year and could require a one-inch overlay as much as every seven years.
How does seal-coat protect the asphalt?
Today almost all roads are constructed using asphalt as the binding material for the stone and sand aggregates underneath. Due to its waterproofing properties, asphalt protects the aggregates from absorbing water, thus preserving their strength and load-carrying capacities.
The strength of asphalt pavement is literally directly related to the pavement design from the ground up. The asphalt is functions as the top layer of the entire pavement. The aggregate base is what really carries the load of the traffic. The same design applies to off-street parking lots and driveways.
Asphalt functions as a roof over the stone base, keeping the pavement bed dry. When the asphalt pavement is well maintained it stays elastic, allowing it to expand and contract while remaining intact.
Why Seal Coat asphalt?
In spite of its excellent binding and waterproofing properties, asphalt is susceptible to weather, salts, and chemicals. Over time these elements negatively impact much of its original properties, such as binding and waterproofing. The first visual sign is when the asphalt’s color gradually changes from rich black to brown and then to gray.
Asphalt is also easily dissolved by products derived from petroleum. When petroleum distillates such as automotive oil or gasoline leak onto an asphalt pavement, these products will dissolve the similar chemicals in asphalt.
The next stage is the growth of minor cracks, which widen and deepen with time. If the cracks are not repaired, water seeps into the base and damages the pavement’s load bearing capacity. The results are rutting, shifting, and serious alligatoring.
Then you need have the pavement overlaid or completely removed and reinstalled, depending on the condition.
These problems are associated primarily with off-street pavements such as parking lots, minor streets, runways, and home driveways, which carry low levels of traffic. The speed of pavement deterioration depends upon the traffic volume as well as climate conditions. Constant traffic on highways and roads enable the asphalt to reweave itself, so that the same layer is not constantly exposed to the elements.
Off-street pavements do not have the advantage of this “kneading” action. The surface layers of off-road pavements are under continuous attack from the weather and other damaging elements, eventually developing minor surface cracks. Again, aggregates start separating producing minor cracks, which widen and deepen with time.
The damage will continue if the correct protective actions are not taken. As such, you can preserve off-street pavements with a protective coating that protects it from the elements that destroy the asphalt in the first place.
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