We Look at the Surface
A walk over the surface tells us where water is going and where it is not leaving. That is the check that decides everything else, and it is quick to do properly.
New Orleans metro
Asphalt Maintenance in New Orleans, LA
Tell us the surface and the square footage and the job gets priced properly instead of guessed at. We are fully licensed, bonded, and insured.
Asphalt Maintenance
What Does Asphalt Maintenance Involve?
Maintenance is four ordinary jobs done before they become expensive ones: checking the surface, keeping it clean and draining, sealing cracks while they are still single lines, and coating it when it is ready. None of it is dramatic, and that is the point. Most of what we do on a maintained surface is keep a sound surface sound.
We Keep It Clean and Draining
Grit, growth and blocked edges hold water on a surface that was built to shed it. Clearing them is simple work, and it prevents a great deal of what follows.
We Seal Cracks Early
A single crack is a route for water into the layer beneath. Sealed while it is narrow, it stays a line; left open, it widens and the damage spreads beneath it.
Asphalt Maintenance
Why Is Maintenance Cheaper Than the Alternative?
Maintenance is cheaper because it works on the surface, and the alternative works on the base. Once water has been getting through long enough to soften what is underneath, you are no longer buying a coat or a crack seal. You are buying a repair, and eventually a replacement.
The sequence runs one way, and each step costs more than the one before it. Each can be avoided at the one above it, which is why we would rather tell you a surface has years left in it than sell you a repave.
A Crack, Sealed While It Is a Line
The cheapest step on the list, and the only one that is a small job on the day you notice it.
The Same Crack, Now Open
Wide enough to take water into the layer below, where it starts working on the base.
A Soft Patch, Then a Hole
The base has softened under the surface, and the asphalt above it gives way.
Connected Failure Across an Area
The point at which the surface has to come out rather than be patched.
Asphalt Maintenance
What Does a New Orleans Surface Need Watching For?
Here you watch for heat, water and movement, because those are the three that work on a surface in this area and they work together. A surface can be laid perfectly and still need attention sooner here than the same surface would elsewhere.
Heat
Long, hot summers soften the binder, and a softened surface deforms under standing weight. The first marks show where heavy weight stands still rather than where traffic passes over.
Water
Heavy rainfall finds every opening. Water that gets under a surface and cannot drain takes the strength out of the base.
Ground Movement
Much of this area is built on soft ground that settles, so dips appear in a surface that was laid level. We give drainage and levels as much attention as the material.
Asphalt Maintenance
How Often Should a Surface Be Checked?
A surface should be checked often enough that you find a crack while it is still a line, and after heavy weather rather than on a fixed date. What matters is not the interval on a calendar but whether anyone has actually looked since the last time water sat on it.
Anything below is worth a call. Most are small jobs on the day you notice them, and all get more expensive the longer they wait. We would rather you rang us about a crack than about a hole.
Water Standing After Rain
Anywhere it sits once the rain has stopped, which means the levels are no longer moving it off.
A Crack Wide Enough to See Into
Still a sealing job at that width. Left alone it branches and reaches the base.
Loose Grit Sweeping Off
The surface is losing binder at the top, which is what a coat is for once the cracks are dealt with.
Soft or Springy Areas Underfoot
These point below the surface rather than at it, and they are the one on the list that is not a small job.
Asphalt Maintenance
What Moves the Price of Asphalt Maintenance?
The price moves with the measured area, how much crack sealing the surface needs, how much cleaning and clearing has to happen first, access for our equipment, and how much of the area can be closed at once. We do not publish a price per square foot, because a maintained surface and a neglected one of the same size are different pieces of work.
You get the whole thing in writing before anything starts, at no cost.
Condition, Not Size
Two surfaces of the same measured area can be very different pieces of work, and it is the condition that decides which.
A Surface That Has Been Looked After
A walk over it, a few sealed cracks, and a coat when the surface is ready for one.
A Surface That Has Been Left
The repairs have to come first, and those set the cost rather than the coating does.
Asphalt Maintenance
What Comes After Maintenance?
When a surface is sound and clean, the next step is usually a protective coat.
A Protective Coat
Our seal coating page covers what a coat does and when a surface is ready for one.
If It Is Past That Stage
Paving is the next honest answer rather than a coat that cannot hold.
Asphalt Maintenance
Where Do We Maintain Asphalt?
We maintain asphalt across the New Orleans metro, and each area we cover has a page of its own with the local detail on it. If your property sits on the edge of these areas, call us and we will tell you plainly whether it is in range.
Greater New Orleans
New Orleans, Metairie, Kenner, Gretna, Harahan and River Ridge, across Orleans and Jefferson Parish.
The Northshore
Slidell, Covington, Mandeville and Madisonville, across St. Tammany Parish.
The River Parishes and Baton Rouge
St. Rose, LaPlace, Hammond and Baton Rouge, across St. Charles, St. John the Baptist, Tangipahoa and East Baton Rouge Parish.
Standards
What Do the Asphalt Specifications Actually Say?
Two claims repeated across the paving trade do not survive a reading of the source documents.
A
Minutes, not days
Asphalt does not have a cure time. It gains full strength on cooling and can typically support traffic within minutes of construction, and hours only in rare cases depending on lift thickness and ambient conditions. A newly built two inch surface is generally a few minutes.
B
A few days is advice
The association guidance still recommends waiting a few days before opening a new residential driveway, and keeping a heavy moving truck off a fresh mat. That is best practice advice about protecting a new surface, not a curing requirement.
C
No single minimum temperature
The minimum is set by lift thickness and mix type in the governing specification. Colorado DOT Table 401-3 sets 60 F for a top layer under 1.5 inches, 50 F from 1.5 to under 3 inches, and 45 F at 3 inches or more. Tennessee DOT Table 407.09-1 as revised 12-27-23 sets 45 F unmodified and 55 F modified under 2.0 inches, and 35 F at 2.0 inches or more. Neither of those is Louisiana's specification.
D
Do not seal a new mat early
A well designed low traffic pavement should not require sealing for approximately 2 to 5 years, and the association guidance is not to apply sealer until the driveway is at least several months old.
Not claimed here: 3 to 7 days before traffic
Widely repeated, but every page carrying it was a paving company's own marketing or a content site, and the Asphalt Institute contradicts the framing outright. It does not appear on this page.
Not claimed here: 50 F is the minimum
Repeated as a flat rule. The two state specifications read in full show the minimum is thickness and mix dependent, and those two specifications do not even agree with each other.
The rest of the work
What Else Do We Do With Asphalt?
Pick the one that matches your surface instead of reading one page written for all of them.
Asphalt Installation
Bare ground to finished surface. The base is built and compacted first, and how well that is done decides more about the next twenty years than the mix laid over the top of it.
See installation
Asphalt Paving
Driveways, parking lots and roadways, with the mix matched to the traffic the surface actually carries, whether that is over a new base or over a surface sound enough to keep.
See paving
Asphalt Repair
Potholes, splits and patches that have let go, dealt with in place. The moment water gets past them and reaches the base underneath, a repair stops being a repair and turns into a repave.
See repair
Asphalt Replacing
The old surface comes out and is hauled off, then the area is repaved. The demolition and removal is what separates this from an overlay, and it is where much of the extra work sits.
See replacing
Seal Coating Asphalt Paving
A coat over a surface that is still structurally sound, on the two to five year interval the sources give. It will not rescue a failing base, and it does not go on a mat that is only weeks old.
See seal coating
Ready for a Free Asphalt Maintenance Estimate in New Orleans?
Tell us the surface and the square footage, and the job gets priced properly instead of guessed at.
Driveways
Residential drives across the New Orleans metro, measured and quoted on the surface you actually have.
Parking lots
Commercial lots, surfaced and graded so water leaves them, then kept that way.
Every area we cover
Each area has its own page, written from its own facts. The service areas page goes straight to any of them.
