If your Northern Virginia home has an asphalt driveway, or you have an asphalt parking lot at your business, sealcoating is an important maintenance process that can significantly extend the life of your asphalt surface. While asphalt is the best paving choice with the highest value for many applications, it’s important to remember what it’s made of.
Recent Posts by Chris Smith
The Leftover Asphalt Scam
Almost every neighborhood in Northern Virginia from Haymarket to Alexandria and McLean to Herndon have been targeted by unscrupulous asphalt contractors pushing the “leftover asphalt” scam. The first thing you should know about the “leftover asphalt scam” is that professional asphalt contractors never have asphalt leftover from a job. Asphalt is too expensive. Jobs are carefully calculated, and a legitimate contractor isn’t going to order an extra 20% of the stuff just to be safe.
Avoid These Asphalt Driveway Paving Scams!
For the most part, the asphalt paving contractors who operate in Fairfax, Loudon, and Prince William Counties are legitimate business enterprises. But in asphalt paving, like other home improvement businesses, there are unscrupulous contractors who take advantage of a homeowner’s lack of knowledge to squeeze more profit out of a project. The net result is a subpar job that doesn’t deliver what the homeowner bought, or thought they were buying.
Why is my Asphalt Driveway Cracking?
Our Northern Virginia climate almost guarantees that all driveways, asphalt or concrete, will crack at some point in time. The objective for the homeowner is to put off that cracking for as long as possible and then minimize the damage by repairing the cracks in a timely fashion. A well-maintained asphalt driveway will give you 20 years or more of service in Virginia despite Mother Nature’s efforts to shorten that time.
4 Questions You Need to Ask a Northern Virginia Asphalt Contractor
For most Northern Virginia homeowners, hiring an asphalt paving contractor is a once or twice in a lifetime event. A professionally installed and maintained asphalt driveway will last 20 to 30 years. That’s one of the reasons asphalt is such a popular paving material for driveways, parking aprons and turn arounds.
