Your paved spaces are crucial for your business. Whether you own a multi-family living building or you operate a commercial business, the parking lot, outdoor walkways, and similar areas have a major impact on your business as a whole.
There are several ways that this is the case, and today, we’re going to cover each one while also providing regular pavement maintenance tips to help you keep your paved surfaces in the best shape possible.
The Importance of Regular Pavement Maintenance
As we said, there are several ways that regular pavement maintenance is crucial to your business. Before we get into the tips, let’s go over the ways your paved surfaces impact your business overall.
1: Customer Safety
Your company‘s number one priority should be ensuring that your customers are safe. Not only do you have a moral and legal obligation to provide a reasonably safe environment for your patrons, but you need to financially protect yourself by keeping them safe, too.
If you don’t maintain your pavement and cause an injury, it can result in massive legal fees and lawsuits that can easily cripple smaller businesses.
Regular pavement maintenance helps prevent those problems.
2: Customer and Supply Chain Confusion
This primarily affects your parking lot, but imagine if your paved surface was just pavement—no markings, barriers, or anything else. Without order keeping everything on track and moving smoothly, you and those visiting your business would end up improperly parking, unloading deliveries in customer areas, driving through areas meant for pedestrians, etc.
That not only impacts the safety of everyone visiting your business but also the perception of your business and how smoothly it operates.
3: Perception of Your Business
We just briefly touched on this, but it’s a far larger potential issue. Improperly maintained paved surfaces simply look unprofessional. Cracks, potholes, faded lines, and other common issues all show a lack of professionalism. It’s like going into a job interview for a top management position but wearing jeans and an old band t-shirt. Sure, you’re clothed, but you’re not dressing the part and making a good impression, and the interview notices that. Your paved surfaces are some of the first things customers see, and if they’re not maintained to a professional standard, customers notice.
4: Financial Impact
Regular pavement maintenance does require a fair financial investment, but the cost of letting your pavement crumble is much higher.
What could amount to a simple resealing and patching service every few years could suddenly become the need to rebuild the entire parking lot due to poor maintenance practices.
5: Ecological Impact and Quality Standards
As time goes on, tech advances in every industry. The same is true for pavement. New technologies are always being made to increase the longevity of pavement, make it more eco-friendly, etc.
When you don’t maintain your paved surfaces regularly, you miss out on these useful advances.
Regular Pavement Maintenance Tips
Now that we’ve given you some insight into why regular pavement maintenance is important let’s go over 7 tips for you to handle your pavement maintenance needs and prevent the issues we talked about.
1: Keep the Lot Clean of Debris and Spills
This is something you can do on your own on a regular schedule. You need to keep as much as possible as possible such as snow, car fluid spills, dirt, and debris off the pavement.
Those things can slowly damage the pavement over time, create hazards for guests, and look unprofessional.
Simply setting time aside once a week to sweep, pick up trash, and spray off stubborn spots does wonders, and if there is a threat of snow, make sure you prep the pavement appropriately and get the snow removed ASAP.
2: Schedule Annual Inspections
An annual inspection can do wonders to ensure your paved surfaces stay in good shape. This is a cost-effective measure that includes a professional taking an in-depth look at your pavement, determining any potential issues, and offering you the most effective solutions if necessary.
This can tip you off to growing issues early enough for you to get them handled while they’re cheap to fix.
3: Have Your Pavement Lines Repainted
The pavement lines that show people where to park, walk, and everything else are crucial, but they’re just painted. They wear off after a year or two. They won’t fully disappear for a very long time, but if you want to maintain a professional look and a sense of order in your parking lot, get them repainted regularly.
4: Get The Lot Professionally Resealed Every 2 years
The seal on your parking lot should be redone every 2 to 4 years. It takes a hefty beating as your pavement’s “shield” against destructive substances and UV rays. Once it develops cracks of its own, it exposes the rest of the pavement’s core structure to things that eventually destroy it.
5: Ensure Potholes are Repaired
Potholes start to pop up even if you do everything you can to prevent them. Really bad water damage and ground shifting can leave potholes in the best-paved surfaces.
Get these properly repaired immediately to keep them from working as entryways for water and other issues that spread out over time.
6: Have Sections Patched
Patching pavement is when a section is fully repaired rather than replacing the entire paved surface. This is a cost-effective way to restore the structural integrity of the pavement without all the work involved in a full parking lot restoration.
7: Have a Professional Team Handle Your Regular Pavement Maintenance
Outside of cleaning the lot, you should enlist the help of a professional team to implement all of the tips we’ve given thus far. A professional team with a long track record of producing top-quality results will ensure that your paved surfaces are maintained properly and last longer.
Contact Barnes Asphalt for Your Regular Pavement Maintenance Needs
If you are a property manager responsible for paved surfaces, count on Barnes Asphalt for all your pavement maintenance needs. Whether it’s resealing, patching, or inspecting your lot, Barnes Asphalt is here to help. Our team of professionals is dedicated to keeping your paved areas in top condition, ensuring safety, and enhancing the visual appeal of your property. Don’t wait until minor issues become major problems – contact us today for reliable and efficient parking lot paving, parking lot repair, parking lot striping, pavement maintenance services, and many more asphalt solutions!