The pavement in your yard and around your property makes a big improvement to your home and yard and is a big investment you don't want to go to waste from neglect. Wintertime damage to your asphalt parking pad, driveway, or road can leave you with thousands of dollars in damage come spring. Here are some recommendations to help keep your pavement protected and maintained throughout winter.
Plan For Snow Removal
Winter weather brings all kinds of threats to your pavement, such as ice and freeze damage to cracks and snow removal damage to the surface and edges of your asphalt. To prepare for winter or an upcoming storm, you can put into place some landscape marker poles that you insert into the soil surrounding your pavement's edges. This is helpful when you hire a snow removal service that may use a snowplow, snow thrower, or similar equipment that may damage the edges of your pavement. If your pavement does not have any edge made of concrete, you don't want the plow's blade to dig up and crack the edges of your asphalt.
You also want to make sure your snow removal service knows to use a rubber blade snowplow or hand shovel to clear your asphalt's surface of the snow. Then, you should always follow up with an ice melt product that will protect the asphalt's small cracks from freeze-thaw damage. When you sprinkle ice melt over your pavement after it has been snow shoveled, the snowmelt won't refreeze within the small cracks when the temperature falls at night and won't cause expansion of the cracks. An ice melt appropriate for your climate will prevent the freeze damage, depending on how cold it gets at night. You may need an ice melt product that prevents freezing down to a temperature of well below zero F. Inadequate ice melt protection will result in your asphalt pavement having serious cracking and potentially pothole formation, which will require extensive repairs.
Complete Seasonal Maintenance
Prior to winter's arrival, take some time to check the condition of your pavement so you can identify and repair issues before they degrade further. Look for cracking and fill them with an asphalt repair product. You can also arrange for full-surface repairs by your local asphalt professional.
Check the edges of the pavement and repair the unraveling of the structure and maintain the gravel edging support materials. If you have concrete curbing along the edges of your asphalt, remove any vegetation and weed growth from the seams. Then, clean off any vehicle fluid stains with the use of a pressure washer and an asphalt cleaning product. This will stop the softening of your pavement and prevent hole formation into the pavement.
For more tips, contact a local asphalt maintenance service.