Much has been written about the right way to go about a paving job, what to look out for from contractors and how to spot sketchy ones, the main things to consider when repairing cracks or potholes, how you should prepare a paved surface for adverse weather, and so on. There is a lot to consider and many factors that will influence just how you protect and maintain your paved surface, not least the decision to be made between concrete and asphalt paving.
Parking Lot Pros, paving experts out of Dallas, Texas, advise that one of the easiest ways to get on top of a paving job is to learn about the most common mistakes made – in order to avoid them. Indeed, if you keep in mind the most disastrous things that can go wrong, you can more easily stop them going wrong. This applies even if you are unsure about everything else.
Of course, the best advice is to defer to the guidance of (reputable) professionals, but many paving jobs are DIY jobs. If this is the route you’re taking, learning how to avoid the big mistakes is a great place to start.
A Word About How Paved Surfaces Degrade
However, before getting on to the biggest mistakes to avoid, it is worth getting some of the absolute fundamentals about laying paved surfaces out of the way first. There are two major things that degrade paved surfaces over time, and which you might want to protect against when laying the surface for the first time. These are freeze-thaw weathering and simple wear and tear.
The first of these refers to a process which fundamentally involves water. In colder months, water can penetrate even the smallest of openings. This water then freezes and as it does so, expands. This widens the cracks, meaning it can collect even more water next time and the process repeats – just more severely.
The other thing that degrades paved surfaces is simple wear and tear. This is the effect of whatever is rolling, or walking, over the top of them. Impacts that chip away small pieces of material, as well as weight strain, can seriously degrade a paved surface over time.
The Biggest Paving Mistakes
So, what are these serious mistakes you should avoid? Here follows a list to defer to when you begin that paving job:
Fail to Consider the Weather
You need to consider what your local climate is like before you start paving. For example, if your area is subject to severe winters, then you need to be ready for freeze-thaw weathering to occur much faster and more severely. In response, you might decide to sealcoat your asphalt paving surface. In excessively hot weather, you might go with concrete over asphalt. Weather really is a vital consideration.
Failing to Plan
There is pretty much no job in this life that will not be adversely affected by a failure to plan properly. Where paving is concerned, this means, most fundamentally, understanding the extent of the job. Fail to understand this (at the outset) and you could see costs skyrocketing.
Skimping on the Tools
It’s vital you have the right tools for the job at hand. Filling in a large crack with concrete and a trowel, for example, will lead to that crack reappearing before long (this time with a load of extra concrete to chip away). There are many more examples, so make acquisition of the right tools an essential part of your planning.
Undertaking a paving job yourself can be affordable, effective, and even easy – but only if you watch out for the major pitfalls.
