The best asphalt paving Springfield, Lincoln, and Jacksonville, Illinois has to offer should last you for years without running into any complications or difficulties. However, there comes a time when you need to do maintenance on your asphalt, or you risk running into issues that may compromise its surface integrity. Therefore, you need to follow these simple steps or having professionals like Illinois Paving help you. Doing so will ensure that you keep your asphalt stable and secure for years to come.
Regularly Clean Asphalt Surface
The first thing that you need to do for your asphalt paving is to clean its surface regularly. You don’t have to clean your pavement once a week – thank goodness! – but should at least once a month. Taking the time to clean up its surface is a smart choice and isn’t very difficult to do. Asphalt is usually quite durable and resistant to most types of dirt and stains. However, it is also prone to mold and other types of damage if you do not clean it, problems that can sneak up on you unexpectedly.
As a result, you need to sweep the surface with a broom at least once a month to get rid of leaves, garbage, and other items. Collect these elements in bags and take them away from your home somewhere safe. Often, many garbage removal companies will take this debris on certain days of the year. However, you can also find recycling centers that make some yard debris and even waste removal experts who will handle this process for you so that you don’t have to do it.
That said, you may also need to use power washing processes to clean up oil stains and spilled fuel that may be on your pavement as well. Degreasing agents should be applied to these stains ASAP because they can quickly get out of control and cause real issues with a homeowner’s driveway. And they can also be considered pollution because they may end up damaging the surface of your driveway, wearing away their structure, and causing other issues that may be hard to predict otherwise.
Fix Potholes the Moment That They Appear
A pothole or two is not uncommon on many asphalt paving but is an issue that you shouldn’t ignore or write off as unimportant. Potholes are not just a small break in the surface of your driveway, but they typically go all the way through a slab of pavement. And they usually showcase a series of problems that have impacted your asphalt and need to be fixed right away. As a result, you need to take care of a pothole the moment one appears to avoid any complication with your home’s pavement.
How does a pothole appear on the surface of asphalt? It starts when water gets under the ground beneath your pavement and starts to expand and contrast. Typically, this process is much harder if you have sealed your asphalt – which we’ll get to later – but can occur in many different areas. When it happens, the structure of your asphalt will start to suffer and will create large holes in the asphalt that will degrade the surface of your slab and create a pothole or two throughout the surface of your driveway.
Repairing potholes requires you to clean the surface near the pothole, heat the surrounding area to make it more pliant, and then add a new custom mix of asphalt to patch up the hole. You then level off the pavement very carefully to make it as smooth as possible for drivers. Then, you wait for the asphalt patch to dry and cool down, and you should be able to drive again. This fix should help in the short term, but you may need to get long-term maintenance done to keep potholes from recurring.
Sealcoat Your Surface
If you haven’t added a sealcoat to the surface of your asphalt paving , you are doing yourself and your pavement a grave disservice. Sealcoating is one of the most important ways of keeping your asphalt secure and requires very little work. All you need to do is add a sealcoat every few years – once every 2-4 years should be enough – to add an extra layer of protection to your driveway and to ensure that it stays as secure as possible for as long as possible in your home.
What is a sealcoat? Sealcoating is a specialized type of sealant designed specifically for asphalt. It reacts to the asphalt and adheres to it to make your pavement more durable and more resistant to damage. Rather than worry about rain, ice, and other types of water impacting the surface of your asphalt, you’ll be able to let it sit for years without wearing down. In this way, it is possible to protect your driveway without having to take any extra difficult step.
Should you do this step yourself or get an expert to help? That all depends on how comfortable you feel with this process. Generally, though, we suggest always getting your asphalt maintenance done by a professional. While you can add a sealcoat to your driveway and keep it stable and secure, there’s also a good chance that you could make a mistake that causes difficulties with your driveway’s surface. So be ready to update your driveway in this way to keep it stable.
Other Steps to Take
Lastly, there are several steps that you can take to keep your asphalt paving as secure as possible. For example, you should check your surface at least once every two weeks for cracks, fading colors, and other types of problems. These issues can not only be early warning signs of failure but can be liability issues if people trip or damage their car on your pavement in this problematic way.
When you spot any cracks, measure them out to see how wide they have become. Typically, you’re going to repair any cracks that are between one-quarter to one-inch. Crack sealing is something that you can handle by getting a proper sealant from an asphalt repair shop and carefully installing it onto the surface of your driveway. Doing so can stop them from getting worse.
However, if the cracks are larger than one inch, you probably need to call in a professional for quick and easy maintenance. This type of work is critical because it will help eliminate problematic areas that may worsen over time. Though it will cost you a little more, this step is necessary to prevent total asphalt slab failure.
Ways We Can Help
As you can see, the best asphalt paving in Springfield, Lincoln, and Jacksonville, Illinois , has to be maintained appropriately to avoid any severe problems. Thankfully, some professionals can help you with this process. At Illinois Paving, we have years of experience helping people like you get the high-quality pavement that they deserve. So please don’t hesitate to reach out to us today to learn more. We will do what we can to ensure that you are happy and satisfied with your home.