Protect Your Driveways With Asphalt Sealcoating

| Thursday, December 19, 2013
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.

Ultraviolet rays reaching the blacktop begin to degrade it. Although is initially flexible and elastic, with time due to UV rays, asphalt will dry out and become rigid. It also turns its color and looks grayish instead of the beautiful black hue. The use of sealcoats not only helps to restore the black color but also prevents weather elements like the UV rays from damaging blacktop surface of your pavements.

At this juncture, you have to replace your pavements or the entire road structure. Ultraviolet rays begin to act on pavements soon they are laid down. The heat from the sun directly bakes the asphaltic blacktop and begins to make the material rigid. Asphaltic material is designed to work best when it is elastic. But when it is heated, asphalt dries fast and becomes hard. As it continues to receive sunshine, it becomes too hard to bend or expand and contract.

The blacktop develops cracks because the material is unable to contract and expand evenly and uniformly. Sealcoat products offer a protective layer on pavements. The layer is weatherproof and prevents the damages caused by weather elements like rainwater and sunshine. When it is applied on top of blacktop, it prevents ultraviolet rays from reaching and heating the asphaltic material directly.

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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