Prepare your parking lot for hurricane season.
Hurricane season is notorious for wreaking havoc on concrete and asphalt pavements, among other things. If your parking lot is not prepared for the onslaught of severe weather, your parking area will take a hammering and suffer significant damage. These damages may cost you a lot of money on repairs and replacement. To avoid running into these problems, here are ways in which you can prepare for hurricane season.
Ways to Prepare for Hurricane Season
Regular Maintenance
The most important thing you can do to ensure that your parking lot is properly prepared is to maintain it regularly. To prepare for hurricane season, an experienced paving professional should inspect your parking lot at least once a year. The assessment of your parking area is required to determine the storm preparation of your property. If any issues are discovered, they must be addressed as soon as possible.
Examine the Existing State of Your Parking Lot
The current state of your parking lot is not indicative of how it will be after the rain begins to pour. Even though every aspect of your parking lot appears to be in good condition, there is no guarantee that it can withstand a hurricane.
Be Aware of Problem Areas
Pay special attention to the trouble spots in your parking lot, if there are any. These parking lot weak areas must be addressed before the hurricane season. When hurricane season arrives, ignoring these problem locations will surely result in potholes, cracking, and other significant damages.
Patching the Parking Lot
When high winds and heavy rain approach, failure to maintain your parking lot surface will make damage worse. When exposed to the ferocity of a storm, a problem spot that could have been fixed with a modest patch could become significantly larger. There is no use in letting the situation worsen when it can be fixed for a lot less money. If you don’t take preventative measures like strategic patching before hurricane season, you can end up having to redo the entire parking lot.
A hot-mix or cold-mix or can be used to fix a paved surface. Cold mix areas will not be able to withstand the onslaught of a storm. Although this cost-effective method works, it will necessitate re-patching in the future. Choose a parking lot expert who will provide high-quality asphalt patching and repair. You can have peace of mind knowing that you can protect paved areas you prepare for hurricane season.
Sealcoat the Pavement
Surface deterioration is another indicator that you should apply a sealant as soon as possible if you never applied one before or cannot remember when the previous one was applied. Modest signs of wear, such as small cracks or a shift in surface color from black to gray, indicates that minor maintenance is required.
These indications do not necessarily indicate that you have done anything wrong. They are the result of modest wear and tear. Keep in mind that parking lots have enormous burdens on their surfaces and are exposed to the elements.
Sealcoating protects asphalt pavement against water and corrosive materials, makes it easier to clean, and improves its appearance. A new coat must be applied every three to five years to help preserve the asphalt’s surface while also averting significantly more costly repairs down the line.
If you leave pavement crevices unfilled, the impact of severe rains and storms is more than just a flooded parking lot or parking garage. The strong rains increase the fractures, and as the major storm progresses, the cracks grow larger. If you keep putting off asphalt patching and repair, the cracks will eventually turn into alligator cracking, which is more difficult and costly to fix.
Prepare Your Asphalt Pavement for the Hurricane Season Today
It’s always a good idea to prepare for hurricane season. No matter what the circumstances are, you need to protect your parking lot from inclement weather. Contact ACPLM today at 888-959-9637 to learn more about parking lot maintenance and how we can prepare your property for the storms.
