Water is an amazing and powerful force, essential to life. But it’s also the primary agent of entropy for other materials, eroding way surfaces or getting inside them and damaging from the inside out. Given enough time, a smooth surface can become like the Grand Canyon, just from the power of water.
While the Grand Canyon might be awe-inspiring, this same force applied to a surface you need to remain smooth can be a real issue. You certainly don’t want your driveway or business parking lot to have anything in common with that craggy canyon! Fortunately, we here at Wolf know how to keep water damage at bay.
Protect Against Water Infiltration
Sealcoating can help protect the life of your asphalt. A sealcoat is basically a thin liquid layer added over a paved surface to protect it from damage caused by UV rays, rain and snow, and fluids from vehicles. Sealcoating won’t cure existing issues, like cracks, but will help prevent such damage from forming in the first place. Besides keeping out damaging elements, properly applying a sealcoat on a regular basis keeps the paved surface looking new and attractive.
Give Water Somewhere Else to Go
Effective water management requires thought about how much water might stay on a surface, how much runs off how quickly, where it naturally goes, and where it could be directed or stored. Collectively, these considerations are called storm water management.
We know that water, given enough time, can damage most surfaces. Therefore, we don’t want water to simply collect and sit on top of a paved surface. Nor do we want it rushing off into roads and drainage systems, which can become overloaded and flooded very quickly. Asphalt can be designed such that it allows water to percolate through the various layers, imitating the natural layers of earth that hold and clean water before allowing it to move into waterways. In fact, full-depth porous asphalt pavements are so effective at storm water management, they’re encouraged by the EPA as a best practice for green infrastructure.
If you want to keep your asphalt surface smooth, functional, and attractive, you need to consider how to manage water. Whether it’s with simple sealcoating applications or with porous or permeable surfaces, water damage can mitigated effectively. If you’d like to discuss how you can best prevent the Grand Canyon effect with your paved surfaces, contact us today!
