We’ve all seen those homes with driveways where the concrete is so beautiful and pristine that the owners make their guests park somewhere else so as not to stain or damage it. That’s not exactly the model of hospitality, is it? Also, it defeats the point of having a driveway in the first place.
Believe it or not, there’s a better way to keep your driveway in great condition! With Northbay Maintenance, you can keep your driveway beautiful and let guests park on it — talk about being the envy of the neighborhood!
Let’s Take a Look at Our Top 5 Tips For Driveway Maintenance and Restoration:
1. Sealing a Concrete Driveway Makes It Last Longer & Look Better
Like they say, prevention is the best medicine. The foundation of good driveway maintenance is to clean and seal your concrete if it isn’t already sealed and reseal it whenever the coating begins to wear down or get cloudy. This is usually every couple of years or so, depending on traffic.
Sealing a driveway creates an impermeable coating on top of the concrete that blocks dirt and contaminants. This keeps the concrete looking its best and significantly slows down the rate of wear and tear, spalling, and scaling. It also protects any decorative elements to the concrete, such as texturing or stamping. This preventative driveway maintenance will keep your driveway looking good for many years to come, and is a crowning last touch after installing a new driveway or completing a concrete driveway restoration project.
Bringing Out Hidden Colors
There’s another benefit of sealing your driveway: As with sealing a deck—another service that Northbay Maintenance provides—sealing concrete brings out the subtle colors hidden in the material. Concrete isn’t actually gray if you look close enough. The colors of the crushed rocks that went into the cement are still there, and sealer brings them out. Many people find this effect to be especially pleasing since it adds subtle depth to the appearance of concrete without being gaudy.
DIY Sealing
For sealing or resealing commercial driveways and lots, we recommend you always go with a professional driveway restoration and maintenance contractor like Northbay Maintenance. For driveway maintenance at home, you can tackle it as a DIY project if you have the desire and the time.
1. Clean Oil Slicks & Stains
p{Any road surface, including driveways, will eventually accumulate stains and oil slicks. The key to good driveway maintenance is to clean these stains as soon as they show up so that they don’t have time to work their way into the material.
2. Pressure Wash Stains & Grime
If your driveway isn’t sealed, or if there are old stains beneath the sealer, the best thing is to pressure wash it. Pressure washing is one of the “magic” tricks of driveway restoration on both concrete and asphalt because it can completely transform the look of your driveway.
Grime accumulates on these surfaces over the years, muting the underlying colors and making the material look gritty and old. When you blast this grimy layer away with a pressure washing machine, you bring out the original material. People are often shocked by how different it looks afterward! Residential pressure washing is another one of the driveway maintenance services we offer at Northbay—and it’s also available for many other outdoor surfaces, such as fences and walls.
3. Patch Cracks Quickly & Replace Damaged Areas When Necessary
p{When cracks appear in your concrete or asphalt, this is a driveway maintenance issue you need to take care of immediately. Cracks can spread very quickly, even if they were previously dormant, and patching a small crack is much easier and less expensive than having to do a complete asphalt or concrete driveway restoration project — bite the bullet and get the restoration work taken care of sooner rather than later.
4. Ice & Snow? Sandy Is Dandy!
Chemical deicers damage concrete driveways over time by accelerating the aging process that occurs when the ground freezes and thaws. New driveways are especially vulnerable. We recommend that, for winter weather driveway maintenance, you avoid deicers completely.
Rock salt is not a good choice either. It causes less damage to the concrete itself, but more damage to the surrounding vegetation as well as to any nearby metal that it comes into contact with, such as vehicles and underground piping.
Instead, we recommend you use ordinary sand. That way, even if the driveway remains frozen, your tires will still be able to get the grip you need. Simply spread a thin layer evenly on the driveway, and you’re good to go!
Northbay Maintenance: Your One-Stop Driveway Contractor
Let Northbay Maintenance handle all of your ongoing driveway maintenance needs. If you have an old driveway in need of repair or refurbishment, we handle concrete driveway restoration as well. We can even build you a completely new driveway if you want with our home renovation services!
We work with all driveway types: No matter what type of concrete you have—stamped, stenciled, stained, whatever!—we’ll keep it looking its best for you. Have a simple asphalt / blacktop driveway? At Northbay Maintenance, we handle driveway restoration and maintenance on them, too.
Contact Northbay today and leave the hard work to us! We’ll come do a free onsite evaluation and give you a project bid that fits your budget to your needs. Save yourself the time and hassle by hiring our full-service provider team today!
