Sealcoating your asphalt parking lot is one of the best ways to keep a new lot looking fresh and clean. A sealcoat helps keep that beautiful, glossy black finish from fading, providing your property that “just paved” look, but there’s more to it than just aesthetics. In fact, sealcoating your asphalt lot is one of the best ways to defend your parking lot from accumulating damage from daily wear and tear — damage that can be both dangerous to your visitors and expensive for you to fix!
What Sealcoating Does
It’s absolutely true that sealcoating preserves the look and feel of your freshly laid asphalt pavement, but the aesthetics are, in actuality, a secondary benefit to the entire process. In fact, sealcoating provides a nearly impenetrable barrier between your parking lot and the environment in ways that you may not be aware, preventing the damaging effects of sun and rain.
Just how damaging can those effects be? Ultraviolet light from the sun not only causes the deep black of fresh asphalt to fade to gray — it damages the surface and makes it more susceptible to water infiltration. This can then lead to cracks if water seeps deep enough, especially if the weather drops to below freezing. At that point, tiny cracks can become gaping potholes. Before you know it, your lot is a minefield of tire-wrecking and ankle-turning pits!
How Sealcoating Helps New Jersey Businesses
Here in New Jersey, we’re lucky to experience all four seasons. Unfortunately, that’s not so good for your asphalt parking lot, as spring rainstorms, hot summer sun, and freezing conditions in autumn and winter can do an absolute number on your asphalt. Sealcoating your lot, however, provides that asphalt with superior protection against the worst of these environmental conditions, reducing your maintenance costs and keeping the parking lot of your business warm and inviting.
Meanwhile, the further benefits of sealing your asphalt parking lot are that doing so protects more than your bottom line. Yes, your place of business will look neat and clean with its clean black lot and its white parking stripes, but it will be safer. Fewer instances of becoming liable for damage to cars, or injuries to visitors, means fewer worries about having to pay expensive and possibly even business-ruining legal fees. As a business owner, you’ve got enough to worry about — don’t add whether your visitors are endangering themselves just by pulling into your parking lot to the list!
The Gift that Keeps on Giving
It’s obvious that sealcoating is an absolute must for savvy business owners in New Jersey. Yet it’s true that some will still balk at the added cost of having your parking lot sealed in addition to being paved or repaved. The truth is, though, that a good sealcoating will more than earn its keep.
You’re already reaping the rewards of a lower maintenance bill overall. Also, you’ve got little to worry about when it comes to visitors hurting themselves or damaging their cars because of the conditions of your parking lot. Most importantly, though, you can rest assured that sealcoats last a very long time. In fact, you only need to reapply a seal every three to five years!
Taking everything into account when it comes to sealcoating — the aesthetics, the safety and maintenance benefits, and the longevity of a single sealcoat — the answer seems clear as crystal. Invest in your asphalt parking lot and reap the rewards.