Every business owner knows that they need to have a well-maintained parking area for customers to be able to safely and comfortably park their vehicles, walk to the establishment, and otherwise simply make use of the business. Having broken or pavement-alternative outdoor areas is a major liability if someone falls or a vehicle is damaged, and many of the alternatives, even for small businesses, are difficult to maintain in an orderly manner.
However, business owners also opt to go without seal coating options that preserve their paved services.
There are a lot of consequences to leaving your pavement exposed to the elements, but today, Seal Canada’s team of pavement specialists is going to explain the benefits of proper sealcoating and how they can help your business dramatically.
1: You Save Money
As a business owner, it is your job to keep your property maintained, and if you don’t do that, you drive off customers with a poor-looking exterior, and you risk causing an injury or vehicular damage that can result in a lawsuit.
However, maintaining a property, particularly the outdoor paved area, is extremely expensive. As you’ll see with the various benefits we describe below, a lot of damage can be caused by unprotected pavement, and you must pay to have that damage repaired if you want your pavement to be safe and professional-looking.
The average business with a sealed pavement saves roughly $120,000 over 15 years by avoiding the damage we’ll be talking about.
2: Extended Lifespan
Having a whole new paved area reinstalled is extremely expensive. You want that investment to last as long as possible. A seal coating helps with that.
Normally, a properly installed pavement area can last 15 years before it’s so beaten up that you have to have it replaced. That’s a decent length of time, but you can also have to replace it sooner if you don’t take perfect care of it.
By having your pavement seal coated, you can extend that lifespan to almost twice as long by combining the coating with regular low-cost maintenance tasks.
3: Easier to Clean
A seal coating keeps debris and other things from slipping into the pavement and getting stuck. It also makes the surface friendlier to your everyday cleaning items.
This does two things. First, it makes cleaning your pavement a lot easier. You won’t have to have an employee go out every day and spend hours simply cleaning the parking lot.
That leads to the second benefit. It saves you more money.
Labor costs are high, and paying someone to spend too much time cleaning when they could be doing something productive is a waste of money.
The easier cleaning provided by a seal coat on your pavement gets your employees back to work fast.
4: Keeps Pavement Flexible
Did you know that pavement isn’t actually “hard”? It’s a flexible material. It simply flexes so little that you can’t see it. This is why it’s optimal for parking lots. The pavement can flex under the continued stress of cars and maintain its shape where other materials would crack quickly.
However, it loses its flexibility over time.
One of the benefits of sealcoating is that it prevents that from happening so the pavement can last longer.
5: Prevents Accidents
Pavement gets slippery over time. There are fine particles of sand and other materials on its surface that get worn away with time. When that happens, cars can skid more easily, and in serious situations, pedestrians can slip and fall.
A sealant keeps those particulates in place for longer so your pavement maintains its grip.
6: Prevents Oxidation
Your pavement oxidizes over time. This causes it to get brittle, and when it does become brittle, it breaks off, flakes apart, creates potholes, and more over time. It’s crucial to prevent oxidation to ensure that your pavement lasts throughout its full lifetime.
A sealcoating protects your pavement from the air and UV light to prevent oxidation and keep it from becoming brittle over time.
7: Makes Pavement Water-Tight
When all those other problems create cracks in your pavement, another problem begins to occur; even if the cracks aren’t very noticeable or meaningful yet.
When it rains, water floods into those cracks and does two things.
First, the water moves through the cracks and starts to erode them. This is the same thing that it does when it cuts through mountain ranges and similar natural phenomena but on a much smaller, and much faster scale. Those little hairline cracks spread, become wider, and go from being a non-issue to being extremely problematic in a short period of time.
That’s not all that happens, though.
That water also works its way underneath the pavement, and then more noticeable damage happens quickly. Not only does the water erode the pavement and weaken it, but it erodes the soil beneath it, too. As the soil is washed away, a gap is created. The weakened pavement then starts to sink into that gap, crumble apart, and create potholes.
8: Protects from Car Fluids
Your customers drive whatever is available to them. If their car has a small leak in the gas line or oil lines, they’re still driving all over your parking lot and dripping those fluids onto the pavement. This is worse than water damage.
Gasoline and oil do damage similar to water, but since they’re so corrosive and chemically damaging, they eat away at the binding materials that keep pavement mixtures together. Essentially, this breaks down the composition of your pavement and makes it corrode extremely quickly.
This is a constant issue because again, your customers drive leaking vehicles all the time whether they know about it or not. You can clean those materials off, but you’re unlikely to prevent all the damage they’re capable of.
A sealcoating puts a layer of protection between your pavement and those dangerous chemicals to ensure that it gets damaged before your pavement’s binding materials do. This greatly reduces long-term damage and keeps your pavement in great shape over time.
Now that you learned more about the benefits of sealcoating and why it’s important for a commercial property, make sure to protect your investment by scheduling a professional pavement sealcoating service with us. Contact us today to get started and experience the benefits of a freshly sealed and protected pavement.
