Well, that will account for maybe 5 days a year. So when is the best time to do sealcoating? What is the most perfect time to sealcoat any asphalt surface?

STOP! You know it’s there. You see it every day when you come into work. You even walk around the crater to get to your front door. It’s your parking lot, and you’ve been ignoring it every day hoping it will go away. I call it “Asphalt Denial”.

Feel that Sun? The heat baking your skin. Your first instincts are to put on sun screen to prevent the sun’s UV rays from damaging your body. Those same UV rays damages your asphalt as well.

The short answer is no. There are different types of asphalt for different purposes and applications. The “mix designs” of asphalt vary from state to state. Each state department of transportation has a standardized specification for different grades of asphalt material. “Surface” asphalt mix from Ohio will be different from “surface” asphalt from Michigan. What is common is that all asphalt “mix designs” fall into three categories: base asphalt, intermediate asphalt and surface asphalt.

In an asphalt industry where “pothole patching” can range from a guy in a pickup throwing asphalt out the back and running over with their truck tires, to 6 or 7 asphalt workers with air compressors, hot box, tack tank, and an asphalt roller working to fill potholes. There’s that balance of cost and quality that many owners try to overcome.

Several customers of mine have been using the term ”Asphalt Paving” and meaning different type of asphalt maintenance. Sometimes they mean asphalt sealcoating which is completely different from asphalt paving.

STOP! You know it’s there. You see it every day when you come into work. You even walk around the crater to get to your front door. It’s your parking lot, and you’ve been ignoring it every day hoping it will go away. I call it “Asphalt Denial”.

Guess what? They’re crap! I think by instinct we know what quality is. There is a crispness or neatness about quality work, and pothole patching is no different. When we see a patch and it looks like a blob, this doesn’t represent a feeling of longevity or good workmanship. If your patch is lumpy and has tire tracks through it, the pothole patch shows carelessness and indifference.

Any good consumer is diligent in doing research and getting quotes for any product or service to be done. Asphalt work is no different. Here are a couple of tips to help the process.

When I talk to customers, the question of “what causes the most harm to an asphalt surface?” comes up quite often. While there are several things that can harm asphalt, there are three enemies of asphalt that are the most common: water, overloading, oxidation.