Asphalt is an extremely durable and resilient material, which makes it perfect for driveways and roads. With proper maintenance, you can expect your asphalt driveway to last up to 25 years without producing any issues. By the end of its lifespan, or due to lack of upkeep, you’ll need to look at repairing or replacing the entire driveway with a fresh batch of asphalt. If you’ve noticed your driveway has begun to show damage, read on to discover the main types of cracking and damage that occur with asphalt paving, which will help you to determine what to relay when contacting a driveway repair service.
Weathering
Your driveway faces constant exposure to various seasonal and temperature changes, sunlight, physical pressure and harsh chemicals found in cleaning solutions. While a freshly paved driveway is dark black and highly resistant to water and chemical infiltration, over time this elemental exposure begins to degrade the asphalt and it starts to turn a lighter grey shade. Through proper maintenance and adding a seal coat to your driveway, you will get many more years out of your paving before needing to worry about replacing or repairing it.
Grade Depressions
If you’ve spotted areas of your driveway that seem to be sunken in and no longer level with the rest of the surface area, it’s probably grade depression. This happens when there is shifting between the lower layers due to settling, resulting in some parts
Potholes
This one’s a no-brainer, as we’ve all probably encountered a few. Potholes form as a result of improper care or lack of maintenance, where smaller problems are left to worsen to the extent that parts of the asphalt completely collapse and give way.
Rutting
This is when a concrete pavement or driveway begins to show clear grooves and indentations, caused by repeated and heavy compression from cars over time. While not so common in home driveways where you don’t deal with a large amount of traffic at a constant, it can occur. Correcting rutting is a fairly simple process where the indentations are filled up to evenly level out with the rest of the paving.
Corrugations
A clear indicator of corrugations is visibly spotting lumps and bumps on the surface, as if bubbles have formed in those parts of the driveway. Typically, this happens because the concrete was not mixed to the correct ratios. If you have problems with corrugations on your paving, it will need to be corrected by completely cutting out those bumps and filling up the area with a fresh batch of asphalt. You should bear in mind that more bumps are probably going to start appearing, as the consistency of your entire driveway or paved area was poured from the same mix formulation. If it becomes a serious problem, the best long-term solution is to completely strip the asphalt and replace it.
Patch Failures
When paving is damaged and it’s only in small or specific areas, asphalt patches are applied to fix the problem. This will restore your paving to an improved condition, but if done improperly you’ll discover the patch coming apart after a while. Patched asphalt areas are also more likely to be damaged by severe weather conditions, which is why you should consider a full replacement if you’ve already got several patched areas in your driveway or paving. If the patch does fail, it will need to be completely dug up again and the process of refilling it will need to be repeated.
Edge Cracking
These cracks appear at the edges of pavements and can be caused by changes in the soil under the asphalt through drying and shrinking, changes in the surrounding vegetation where roots may have disrupted the area, or poor drainage of water. Correcting edge cracking involves filling the cracks with an asphalt emulsion or crack sealing formula. Professionally corrections to edge cracking also includes uprooting and removing any plants directly next to and around the paving.
Now that you are more familiar with problems that can happen with asphalt installations, we hope you’ll be able to identify issues and call in a driveway repair service to correct the faults before they worsen. Lastly, maintenance is always the best choice if you want your driveway to last as long as possible and look its best. Get in touch with us at C. Aurora Paving for driveway repair services.