When it comes to house maintenance, paving is one of the most overlooked aspects. While your pavement is highly durable, improper maintenance can weaken its ability to withstand the elements or the test of time. To avoid having to pay for expensive repairs or a driveway replacement, you need to improve your understanding about this part of your home. In particular, you should be able to answer a couple of questions about this major part of your property. 

Outside Of Routine Maintenance, Are There Any Steps You Can Take To Extend The life Of Your Driveway?

While you are almost assuredly aware of the need to seal coat your driveway, you may not realize that there are other steps you can take to help protect it from various forms of damage. In particular, water damage is a very common cause of driveway damage and failure, but you can dramatically reduce the likelihood of this problem striking your home by improving the drainage of the soil around your pavement. 

By enhancing your soil's drainage, you can help prevent water from collecting under the driveway. When this happens, it can cause swelling of the pavement, which may lead to cracking. To improve the drainage, you should consider installing conventional drains or French drains to help transport excess water away from your driveway. 

How Can You Repair And Prevent Rutting?

Rutting is an extremely common problem for driveways, and you have likely seen the impressions that rutting can leave behind at some point in your life. This problem occurs because the weight of the car is able to gradually compress the asphalt, and this problem is especially common in areas that have extremely hot summers.

To mitigate this problem, you should avoid parking your car in the same spot every day. By alternating your parking, you can help prevent the type of overcompression that makes this problem develop. In instances where rutting as already occurred, you will need to use asphalt filler to even out the ruts. After applying this material to the rut, you should leave it to dry before applying a fresh seal coat to the driveway.  

Driveway maintenance is a critical part of maintaining the appearance of your home, but this is not the only important reason to perform this work because the condition of your driveway can also dramatically impact the value of your home. For those that are new homeowners, learning about driveway maintenance may be a low priority, but understanding the answers to these routine questions should help you to avoid and correct some routine sources of damage that residential driveways encounter. (For more information, contact Rubydale Asphalt Works Ltd or another company)