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In an asphalt industry where “pothole patching” can range from a guy in a pickup throwing asphalt out the back and running over with their truck tires, to 6 or 7 asphalt workers with air compressors, hot box, tack tank, and an asphalt roller working to fill potholes. There’s that balance of cost and quality that many owners try to overcome.

Several customers of mine have been using the term ”Asphalt Paving” and meaning different type of asphalt maintenance. Sometimes they mean asphalt sealcoating which is completely different from asphalt paving.

STOP! You know it’s there. You see it every day when you come into work. You even walk around the crater to get to your front door. It’s your parking lot, and you’ve been ignoring it every day hoping it will go away. I call it “Asphalt Denial”.

Guess what? They’re crap! I think by instinct we know what quality is. There is a crispness or neatness about quality work, and pothole patching is no different. When we see a patch and it looks like a blob, this doesn’t represent a feeling of longevity or good workmanship. If your patch is lumpy and has tire tracks through it, the pothole patch shows carelessness and indifference.

Any good consumer is diligent in doing research and getting quotes for any product or service to be done. Asphalt work is no different. Here are a couple of tips to help the process.

When I talk to customers, the question of “what causes the most harm to an asphalt surface?” comes up quite often. While there are several things that can harm asphalt, there are three enemies of asphalt that are the most common: water, overloading, oxidation.

You need to fix your pothole when the phrase head over heels doesn't mean you're in love!

The installation of asphalt has been done in a variety of weather and temperature conditions. People ask me all the time “What is the optimum temperature to lay asphalt?” Now I’m thinking “I like it around 65 to 70. Not too hot, not too cold, I don’t sweat so much”. Then I realize the customer is talking about the installation of their asphalt and not my well being. The answer to their question is “It depends.”

Some projects can only be done at certain times of the year. For example, it is no surprise that you see road crews in Michigan working in the summer and not in the winter. This is true in other states as well. The northern states have very cold winters with a lot of snow, and these conditions can make it impossible for workers to do the jobs that need to get done. On top of this, the driving conditions can be rather bad, so there is more danger to those crews when snow and ice are covering the roads. To find out about the best months for jobs like seal coating, you have to consider all of these things.

In the world of parking lot maintainence the burning question about sealcoating is?...... Which is better to apply sealcoating, brushing or spraying?