Search This Blog

27 August 2013

Delay Damages On Pavements By Sealcoating The Surfaces Through Seal Coating Columbus Contractors

By Amanda Baird


A seal coating Columbus contractor can use quality sealant material to cover blacktop and prevent it from damages, which arise due to environmental and manmade elements. Sealcoats are applied as a way of preserving the quality of asphaltic material. After installing asphaltic pavements, an oxidation process begins to take effect and this happens slowly. It may take years before the surface changes its color.

Although sealcoats protect the surfaces from damages, at some point the blacktop will be damaged. Sealcoats help delay damages occurring in pavements and therefore, you spend less in repairs. There is continuous change in quality of asphalt caused by water, salts, sunlight, and petroleum products. The pavements support loads from the vehicle traffic and this causes the surfaces to wear out.

With continuous use of these salts, they cause damage on roads. Once you have constructed pavements, they have a good visco-elasticity property, but this asphalt quality begins to degrade with time. When you start to see your roads fading, it means that they are losing their visco-elasticity quality. The black color transforms and changes to gray and this is a sign that you need to sealcoat your pavement.

Sealcoats application requires proper timing because different pavements will age differently based on other factors like the amount of traffic, the quality of sealants used and effects caused by weather changes. Sealcoating is a continuous improvement plan unlike painting a house. When you paint a house, it may take so many years before you repaint it but for roads, with constant degradation, you will need to recoat the surfaces often.

After that first coating, you still have to coat the surfaces after every 2 to 5 years. This is a continuous process, which you have to repeat over and again throughout the life of driveways and parking lots. If defects have formed on pavements, you have to repair them before you coat the surface. Applying a sealcoat on already deformed surface only masks the defects and cracks may soon be visible.

The formation of defects on roads should be evaluated carefully when sealing the surface. Any defects should first be restored prior to applying a coat, otherwise the coating material will peel off quickly. A sealcoat application only acts as a cosmetic process, which may not be used as an alternative for structural repairs on roads.

Due to the open chain molecules, the asphalt material disintegrates and adjusts its structural composition. In asphalt, new polar bond zones are formed when the material is exposed to oxygen. This continuous process occurs throughout the lifespan of asphalt. The material is constantly rearranging itself as it looks for an equilibrium state.

When the material is exposed to oxygen, this triggers the formation of new polar bonding zones or sites. This process happens continuously meaning that the molecules are rearranging and shuffling about when searching for bonds to create an equilibrium and thermodynamic stable state. The self-assembling process takes place until the material stabilizes. This is ideally the lifespan of the asphaltic material. From the services of a seal coating Columbus contractor, you can lengthen the life expectancy of driveways while at the same time maintaining good traction effect and beautiful roads.




About the Author:



No comments: