02
Paving
Parking lots, asphalt and concrete driveways, concrete overlays, sidewalks and curbs, for private drives and commercial lots alike.
Chapter 01
A surface is only as good as what is under it
Cracked and sunken paving is almost never a paving problem. It is a base problem, or a water problem, that the surface is reporting on. When a driveway develops a dip at the apron or a parking lot alligators into a web of fine cracks in one bay, the material under it has moved, been washed out, or was never compacted properly in the first place.
Northern New Jersey makes this worse than most places. Water gets into a hairline crack, freezes, opens the crack, and lets in more water next time. Two or three winters of that turns a crack you could have sealed into an area that has to be cut out and replaced. Edges go first, because that is where the surface is least supported and where plough blades and turning wheels do the most work.
On commercial lots the other failure is standing water. If the fall was never set properly, water sits, and a surface that stays wet fails several times faster than one that drains. It is also the thing customers and tenants complain about first, long before the cracking gets bad enough to notice.
Municipal park plaza with new surfacing, concrete sidewalk and curb line laid by Adamo Brothers Construction
How we lay it
The grade comes first. We set the fall across the whole area before any base goes down, so water leaves the surface toward somewhere it can actually go. That sounds obvious and it is routinely skipped, because getting it right means doing survey and excavation work before anything that looks like paving has happened.
The base is then built and compacted in lifts to a depth that matches the traffic. A residential driveway and a commercial parking lot carrying delivery trucks are not the same build, and pricing them as though they were is how a lot fails inside five years. Curbs and edge restraint go in to hold the surface, because an unrestrained edge will ravel no matter how good the mix was.
Because we run our own excavation and site work, the clearing, the grading and the base are all done by the same company that lays the surface. There is no gap where one contractor blames another for a level, and no waiting on a subcontractor's calendar between the base being ready and the paving going down. For concrete driveways, sidewalks and curbs we form, pour and finish in house as well.
Chapter 03
Keeping it for its full life
The single most valuable maintenance on asphalt is sealing cracks while they are still hairline. Water is the mechanism behind nearly every failure, so anything that keeps water out of the base buys years. Walk a lot or a driveway once in autumn, before the first freeze, and note anything you can fit a coin into.
Keep drainage clear. Blocked gullies, silted channels and planting beds that have crept over an edge all end the same way: water sitting where it should be leaving. On commercial lots this is worth building into the same schedule as line marking, because both are cheap next to a resurface.
Plough damage on edges and at aprons is common through a bad winter and is worth catching in spring rather than waiting. Call the office on (201) 945-0064 with the address and we will come and look at whether it needs a repair, an overlay, or nothing at all yet.
Adamo Brothers. Fully licensed, bonded and insured. NJ Home Improvement Contractor Lic. #13VH00015800. Call (201) 945-0064.