Tuesday, December 17, 2013

Protect Your Driveways With Asphalt Sealcoating

By Cornelia White


Proper maintenance of asphaltic pavements is essential if you have to prolong their lifespan. Asphaltic material is durable and lasts for many years. However, if preventive maintenance is not put into practice properly, it can give room for the asphaltic blacktop to deteriorate fast. Using asphalt sealcoating helps in preserving the quality of your asphaltic pavements. The coat helps protect the surface from effects of sunlight and rainwater.

To prevent things like ultraviolet rays from causing damage on blacktop, you need to coat the surface with a protective layer. Sealcoats offer a weatherproof membrane, which prevents rainwater, sunshine, and gasoline products as well as salts from directly acting on blacktop material. The moment you lay down asphalt pavement, the sun begins to act on the material.

With time, the blacktop changes its color and small stones become loose on the surfaces. Those stones break away due to the deteriorating binding property of blacktop material. The adhesives in asphalt will deteriorate and become weak with continuous exposure to ultraviolet rays. The effects of sunlight are more when the surface is not protected. If you protect blacktop with a sealcoat, you prevent the sunrays from reaching and baking the blacktop surface.

This proactive barrier helps in minimizing premature damages that occur due to effects of things like sunlight and rainwater. The formation of small hairline cracks on asphalt materials indicates that you need to sealcoat the surfaces. The small hairline cracking are not a problem as such because they can be restored with use of sealcoats.

The widening fine hairline cracks caused by the drying asphaltic material may enlarge with time, and allow water to penetrate down. However, using sealcoats prevents these failures from occurring. When you sealcoat the surface, you prevent the cracks from forming easily. This means that the surface does not have openings where water can seep inside. Besides, you enhance the elasticity of the pavements, which is one thing that causes the roads to form cracks.

Besides, it prevents water from penetrating the pavements. Most of the cracks your see on roads start from small cracking caused by the drying asphaltic material. As it dries out, it forms thin, tiny hairline cracking. These are usually not a problem because they can be sealed with use of a sealcoat.

Transmission fluids and oil spillages on roads increase the oxidation process leading to premature damages of your pavement structures. In times of cold weather, when snow forms on surfaces of roads, de-icing salts are used to thaw and help remove it from roads. However, these salts are not good for the blacktop asphaltic material. They cause damages with time meaning you may have to deal with major repairs.

Soon the sealer material wears out and exposes surfaces of roads to the effects of sunlight and water. The asphalt sealcoating procedure should be applied in the right time, and when the asphalt material has cured properly. In addition, the sealant products should not be applied on surfaces that have defects like cracks except for the very tiny and hairline cracks where a sealcoat can be used to restore them. Otherwise, any other defects have to be repaired before the coat is applied.




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