Asphalt Companies Monticello, IL

Potholes in Your Parking Lot: Why Repairs Are Mandatory

Your business has had the same parking lot for a few years, and it is mostly in pretty good shape. However, you’ve noticed a lot of potholes lately and are worried that you might need to contact asphalt companies to fix them. Unfortunately, potholes cannot be tolerated because they are a severe issue for your business.

Therefore, you should fully understand why potholes are so problematic for your parking lot. These issues extend beyond minor problems with your pavement and stretch to potential legal complications and lawsuits with your customers. Simple professional pavement repair or replacement methods can keep you safe from this danger.

Potholes Compromise Your Parking Lot Integrity

Potholes are more than just a single spot of damage on your parking lot; they can be an indicator of more severe problems throughout your slab. For example, many types of potholes occur because the subbase and subgrade of the pavement slab are weak and cannot support the pavement. When this happens, a hole gradually appears that punctures all of your pavement and causes serious damage.

Even worse, this damage can become a problem when people drive over your potholes or inside of them. Asphalt companies warn people about driving in potholes for a reason: the more often you drive inside of them, the more damage their sides will suffer. In this situation, there’s a good chance that a pothole could spread out and cause even more to appear across your parking lot.

In a way, potholes can serve as a useful warning system for severe issues with your pavement and help you focus on getting them repaired as soon as possible. This fact is particularly true if your area goes through substantial summer and winter temperature changes. Potholes typically react to these temperature switches very adversely and cause even more issues with their structure.

Even worse, potholes can become persistent enough across the surface of your driveway to trigger a variety of issues with vehicles in your parking lot. Fully understanding why potholes damage vehicles – and why this is such a problem for your business – is critical when deciding if you need to contact asphalt companies to repair potholes or if you want to try to fill them yourself.

Vehicle Damage Can Be a Very Problematic Issue

When a vehicle wheel hits a pothole, a variety of reactions occur throughout the car chassis. First of all, the shock absorbers will go up and down to protect your axle from damage. That extra strain is sometimes quite severe and may trigger shock failure if a vehicle already has suffered from damage to this area. However, this isn’t the end of the troubles that occur in this situation.

For example, the jolting pressure of the pothole may not be entirely absorbed by the shocks and spread to other areas of your vehicle. When this happens, you could experience damage to spots of your car or truck – your wheel may blow in a pothole, or you may experience problems with the undercarriage if it strikes the pavement. These issues are bad enough when they impact your car or those of your employees.

However, pothole damage becomes a real issue if one of your customers is affected by driving inside of one. For example, you may have a customer attempt to sue you for failure to fix potholes if they cause damage to their car. And the worst thing here is that there is a good chance that this lawsuit could succeed. You owe your customers a safe place to visit, and a pothole-filled driveway does not fulfill this requirement.

Thankfully, potholes can be repaired quickly, efficiently, and sometimes without a lot of excessive work. There are instances in which you may be able to fix the potholes yourself, though you should stick with professional asphalt companies instead. DIY pothole repair, while possible, is a tricky prospect for even the most skilled amateur repair person or business owner.

Don’t Try DIY Repairs

Fixing potholes is typically as easy as pouring a hot pavement mix into the damaged area and spreading it out evenly with the surface of your parking lot. Therefore, some of your employees are trying to convince you that they can do these repairs or that you can do them on your own. Don’t fall victim to this belief – you’re likely to make some problematic mistakes when performing even a simple DIY pothole repair.

For example, you may not mix your paving materials well enough and end up with a waterier mix than necessary. This problem may not seem huge at first but can become an issue when cracks and other problems appear in your patch. You may also spread the patch unevenly on the surface of your pavement, which is a problem that can cause uneven driving that may still trigger issues with your customer’s vehicles.

These problematic issues make DIY repairs simply not worth your time or effort. You’re better off contacting asphalt companies to do these repairs for you even if it costs you a little bit of extra money. These professionals will fully understand how to fix your potholes in a way that doesn’t cause more problems in the future, and they can provide maintenance help to ensure that your pavement will stay stable and robust.

Find a Professional Who You Can Trust

As you can see, DIY pothole repair is rarely a good idea for your business. While you might feel comfortable working with asphalt and other types of repair methods, you should still contact asphalt companies to perform these simple, but delicate, repairs for you. Doing so protects your business and your livelihood in a variety of ways.

Please don’t hesitate to contact us at Elite Paving & Sealcoating to get the help you need for these types of repairs. Our experts focus on Monticello, IL and Central Illinois and will come to your business, inspect your driveway, and give you an insight into what kinds of repairs are necessary and, just as importantly, how much they will cost you to complete.

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