Several factors affect your commercial property value. One of those factors is the aesthetic appeal of the property. If you have a lot of pavement – usually in the form of a parking lot – it can have an impact on your property value. Whether it’s a positive or negative impact, is up to you.

Looks Make a Huge Difference

You’ve likely heard the term “curb appeal.” Looks drive property values, and commercial property has to look visually appealing. Good-looking grounds do more than increase the property value; they also attract business in general.

Something like parking lot can take up an incredible amount of visual real estate. It draws the eye and helps people come to conclusions about the property. If your pavement is in disrepair, potential clients, investors or buyers may assume that other parts of the property are in disrepair as well.

Maintain or Increase Your Property Value by Maintaining Your Pavement

To start take a walk around your property and make note of obvious flaws that need repair. If you’re unsure where to start, you should consult with a professional pavement contractor. A pavement contractor can help you with any or all of the following:

• Dealing with cracks in your pavement
• Repairing or patching any spots of deterioration
• Cleaning it properly (blowers, sweepers, pressure washers)
• Sealing the pavement (binding, waterproofing, strengthening)

This is all assuming you have pavement that isn’t too far-gone. In some cases, your paving contractor may suggest you take further steps.

Resurfacing or Repaving Your Pavement

If your pavement needs more than a few repairs, you should have it resurfaced. However, if you have pavement that’s torn-up and heavy on damage, you should definitely opt to have it repaved altogether. Remember that your pavement is an investment, and that investment will pay off in multiple ways – if you take care of it.

If you don’t know where you should begin, you need to speak to a professional Dykes paving contractor that can help you figure it all out. Contact us today.

The Process of Applying Sealcoat that Lasts

Laying down sealcoat to bind with asphalt requires knowledge of the complex interplay of humidity and temperature in the Atlanta region. Since the sealcoat needs to bind with the surface, all the water has to evaporate from it so that it can dry without having destructive air pockets trapped at the interface. Essentially, sealcoat is quite temperature sensitive.

If the atmospheric humidity is elevated, for example, the sealcoat won’t dry for a long time; a lot of moisture in the air thus delays the use of the road. Similarly, cold temperatures also lead to longer drying times. Both cases occur because the water in the sealcoat must evaporate, and cold temperatures make it harder for moisture to evaporate.

It’s easy to see why higher humidity – which means that the air is saturated with more water – also leads to longer drying times. There’s so much water in the air already, that there are fewer places for the water molecules from the sealcoat to occupy; thereby decreasing the rate of evaporation.

Although Atlanta temperatures aren’t like the East Coast, the chilly nighttime air can cause the incorrectly laid sealcoat to split and crack, decreasing the lifetime of the road or pavement. As such, you need to make sure a professional does the job, so that they’ve evacuated all the water out before the coat dries – otherwise the water will freeze and break through.

Repairing Damaged Asphalt

If you’ve had your surface seal coated in the past by a subpar contractor, chances are that the road is already suffering – it only takes a single winter for the effects of a poor job to start showing. At Dykes Paving, we perform rehabilitative surfacing too; structural damage can be repaired to look and perform like new. The benefits of repairing early are that you avoid having to shell out for entire road replacement down the line, and you reduce damage to vehicle tires from the grains chipped off from poorly coated roads. Our servicing techniques have been demonstrated to help pavement last for decades.

The sealcoat technicians at Dykes Paving understand the intricacies involved with laying down water-based sealcoat that can perform throughout the temperatures to which it will be subjected during the year. A well-executed process means that your costs will be reduced, and the asphalt will hold up much better to the environment. For your own peace of mind, get yourself a contractor from Dykes Paving in Atlanta – we know sealcoating and asphalt better than anyone else. Contact Dykes Paving today for a free consultation.

While some of the safety hazards of parking lots are inescapable and others can be minimized by implementing better traffic control measures and educating employees on parking lot safety practices, other safety hazards are caused by poor pavement conditions. Resurfacing or rehabilitating a deteriorating asphalt surface is a necessary maintenance expense that will greatly reduce the risk of injury and property damage on your company’s parking lot.

The upper layer of asphalt on your parking lot is designed to flex under pressure and deflect weight load to the supporting layers below it. When long exposure to heavy pressures create ruts or uneven surfaces, these dips can lead to further deterioration. They can also cause trips and falls, for even a height difference of a half inch is enough to cause a pedestrian to lose his or her balance.

Early Stage of Asphalt Decay

Small fissures lines, larger cracks, and occasional pot holes will also begin to develop as the pavement surface is worn by year after year of weather and vehicle traffic. These early stages of asphalt decay can only lead to more serious weakening later on. Once the lower layers begin to crumble, the pavement will have to be entirely rebuilt, at least in those areas where the support structure has been compromised.

As the asphalt wears, it can lose its surface friction, which increases the chances of vehicles sliding and colliding. As the pavement becomes more and more dangerous, drivers will become more and more distracted with navigating around bumps and potholes, which only increases the chances of an accident. By filling in eroded areas and overlaying the entire parking lot with a fresh coat of asphalt, you can reduce parking lot safety hazards to an absolute minimum.

Hot-Mix Asphalt

Most resurfacing involves laying down hot-mix materials, which include stone, gravel, sand, and liquid asphalt. Optionally, you can also insert a layer of moisture-resistant fabric between the old and new asphalt to add extra strength. Hot-pour resurfacing can extend the life of pavement for 16 to 20 years, and will greatly reduce the risks involved in walking or driving through your company’s parking lot.

If your pavement’s safety level is getting low, Dykes Paving, a local Atlanta pavement restoration company, offers excellent parking lot resurfacing and rehabilitation services. We have experienced personnel necessary to quickly transform your parking facility into a much less accident-prone environment. Contact us today and your new, safer parking facility will cure and be ready for use within a few hours of application.

Sealcoating

Sealcoating involves spraying a coal-tar pitch emulsion over existing asphalt, primarily for cosmetic reasons. It does almost nothing to improve the integrity of the asphalt, wears off in a year or two, and creates fine particulates that are tracked into your home or business, to become airborne and embed in the lungs. According to the USGS, “Results from a new study by researchers from Baylor University and the USGS indicate that living adjacent to a coal-tar-sealed pavement is associated with significant increases in estimated excess lifetime cancer risk, and that much of the increased risk occurs during early childhood.”

Many asphalt contractors offer coal-tar pitch sealcoating because their customers do not understand its risks. The product does give a smooth, deep black appearance to an asphalt driveway or parking lot – for a short time. Compared to other options that can last a decade or more, coal-tar pitch sealcoating usually only lasts one or two years before tires and foot traffic wears it off.

Coal-Tar Pitch

Sealcoating, whether done by homeowners buying five-gallon buckets from home improvement stores or sprayed down by contractors, is typically 20 to 35 percent coal-tar pitch, containing 50,000 to 100,000 parts per million polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs). This is far greater than the PAHs found in asphalt-based sealcoat materials, and many, many times greater than PAH exposure from resurfaced asphalt.

Asphalt-based Sealcoating

The southern, eastern and central United States typically uses coal-tar pitch sealcoating, with the western United States using asphalt-based sealcoat. This is because steel plants that create the raw product to make coal-tar pitch sealcoating are largely located in the eastern half of the United States. Getting asphalt-based sealcoating in sufficient quantities to be commercially useful is cost-prohibitive in the south and east.

Better Alternatives to Sealcoating

Resurfacing is a far greener, efficient and durable option than sealcoating. Resurfacing recycles the top layer of an asphalt paved area and lays down a fresh, 1 ½ to two-inch layer of fresh asphalt. This gives the desired smooth, black finish and releases far fewer PAHs than sealcoating.
In the hands of a professional contractors like Dykes Paving, with our innovative techniques such as Perma Flex® and our stewardship of resources, resurfacing:

• reduces consumption of raw materials
• saves energy
• releases far fewer volatiles
• recycles the old asphalt surface

If your commercial project, renovation or remodeling job is seeking Leadership in Energy & Environmental Design (LEED) certification, consider resurfacing rather than sealcoating. Benefits of resurfacing and recycling include:

• Conservation of natural habitat
• Diversion of waste destined for landfills
• Durability
• Less maintenance
• Lower costs
• Reduction of greenhouse gas emissions

A resurfaced driveway or parking lot is many times more durable than the superficial sealcoating sprayed on top of an existing asphalt surface. Because a thick, fresh layer of asphalt containing recycled material and new hot mix is applied and tamped down, the surface is unbroken and completely flat. Water runoff improves, vehicle damage is reduced, and trip and fall hazards diminish.

If you are concerned about avoiding exposure to cancer-causing PAHs for you, your family or employees, consider resurfacing your asphalt driveway or parking lot. Contact Dykes to discuss resurfacing options today.

Fatigue cracking in asphalt is generally recognizable by what’s known as alligator cracking, so named because the cracking takes the shape of the spikes on an alligators back. Something like chicken wire or a lightning bolt. These start small and spread and appear near each other and connect eventually requiring serious repair.

Just like it sounds, fatigue cracking is a symptom of over use, either by loads too heavy for the pavement or more repetitions of a given load than designed for. Poorly drained bases beneath the surface layer of asphalt will make the problem worse.

3 types of Fatigue Cracking

The Federal Highway Administration’s identifies 3 levels of severity for fatigue cracking:

• High severity fatigue cracking is when the cracks have connected in large areas and there are several pieces of surface asphalt that are very loose. This is when the pavement has been stressed to the limit of its fatigue life. It is no longer attractive and is barely functional. Pavement in this condition needs repair immediately.
• Moderate severity fatigue cracking is distinguished by the arrival of connecting cracks and the alligator type cracking pattern. The cracks may be swollen slightly and lower layers of road materials be become evident. Pieces of the surface layer of asphalt my move and break off if subjected to traffic.
• Low severity fatigue cracking is when an area of asphalt has only small cracks with very few or none of them connecting to display the zig zag alligator type shape. Also the cracks are not evidently removing lower layers of the road materials.

Repairing Fatigue Cracking

Repairing fatigue cracking and the potholes it creates does more than just improve the appearance of the site. Fixing cracks and holes reduces safety hazards. In Atlanta, no one is better at resurfacing and rehabilitation of asphalt than Dykes Paving. You can find information about their resurfacing work here.

New studies on old roads have shown the best way to prevent fatigue cracking is to start from the bottom up with better materials and better processes. Although it is impossible to prevent fatigue cracking indefinitely, roads are getting better and more durable every year. But traffic and use of trucks has also been increasing in recent decades. When an old road has reached the end of its fatigue life and high severity fatigue cracking is apparent then work has to be done to fix the road. Typical surface treatments sometimes lonely 3-4 years which is terribly expensive. This may be a sign the base materials have shifted and are now highly conducive to creating these surface cracks. This can be because of a combination of poor drainage and shifts and cracks in the base materials which allows water into areas it shouldn’t be allowed.

At this point the best thing to do is to rebuild the road from the bottom up. You will have to dig up all the layers and re-lay it better and more carefully. Especially if the road is old, the new bottom up treatment will last significantly longer due to technology and materials improvement. But for roads who aren’t quite that old it may seem like a lot of work to dig it up and start again. Repaving and resurfacing can help save the life of your asphalt and keep it attractive.