When family, friends and guests arrive at your house, what’s the first thing they see? Your front lawn? Maybe. Your house? Possibly. Your driveway? Definitely. We all want our home to have curb side appeal.
Whether it’s because you plan on moving, or just want the most attractive home on the block, there are many reasons to get asphalt paving done.
From home driveways to business parking lots, the perks of asphalt paving are widely unknown. We’re here to tell you all the benefits of asphalt with these 4 common misconceptions about asphalt paving.
Misconceptions that many people have.
Cost
The first common misconception about residential asphalt paving is that it’s more costly than any other type of paving to install, particularly concrete. Concrete has a higher cost for both installation and repair versus asphalt paving. While a typical asphalt driveway costs around $2 to $5 per square foot, concrete can range from $4.99 to $9 per square foot.
While it’s true that DIY concrete material can be as low at $2.59 per square foot, the one thing you can’t buy is the knowledge, experience and proper training that driveway pavers provide. Here at AC Paving, we believe in providing our customers with their money’s worth.
It’s important for us that you are fully satisfied with the quality of our work, which is why we only use high quality asphalt materials. Clean up is a major concern for many home and business owners when purchasing such a large investment. Our work ethic is to leave your property cleaner than when we found it, because just like you take pride in your home, we take pride in our work.
Asphalt vs. Concrete
When properly maintained and sealcoated, asphalt has been proven to withstand extreme changes in temperature better than concrete, ranging from freezing cold to blistering heat.
Concrete gets damaged by the salt used every winter to keep our roads from icing, while salt has no effect on asphalt. When sealcoating is done in a timely fashion, it can more than double the lifespan of your asphalt driveway.
Repairing the cracks in concrete is going to cost you a pretty penny. Concrete can cost anywhere from $3-$10 per square foot to repair, excluding labor costs. Sealcoating asphalt takes half the time that it takes to repair concrete for half the cost.
Durability
Probably the biggest misconception about asphalt is that it doesn’t last nearly as long as concrete. Fatigue cracking, or “alligator cracking” is almost always caused by pre-existing problems beneath the surface of the asphalt.
With proper preparation, installation and maintenance, asphalt can last anywhere from 25 to 50 years and beyond. Cracking in asphalt is preventable and easy to fix, but like we’ve mentioned before there is no way to prevent concrete from cracking, only repair it.
Environmentally Friendly
Asphalt is an environmentally friendly substance starting from production. Not only do asphalt processing plants produce a lower carbon footprint than any other paving material, it requires less energy and fewer natural resources to make.
We recycle all unused asphalt materials so that nothing goes to waste. Asphalt also happens to be non-water soluble, so it won’t contaminate water in run-off or “leach” any contaminants into the soil.
If you’re interested in learning more about the benefits of asphalt paving, request an estimate or call (410) 923-6100 TODAY!
It’s interesting that one of the bigger misconceptions about asphalt is that it doesn’t last as long as concrete. I didn’t think this would be true but it makes sense that with improper maintenance it could very well be. It’s something I’ll have to remember when getting my driveway paved because I want it to look good and sleek for a long time.
My brother told me that his driveway has a lot of cracks due to the snow season. I did not know that concrete gets damaged by the salt used every winter to keep our roads from icing. I will tell him to contact an asphalt paving contractor so that they can fix those cracks.