Our Blog

When planning a seal coating project, one of your biggest concerns will be how long your tenants will be inconvenienced. You want to get the job done as quickly as possible while minimizing the time of inconvenience to your tenants. Below are 4 tips to minimize that inconvenience time:

1. Have the contractor work around your needs

Some contractors may treat your project as a cookie-cutter project, as in, if the parking lot falls within a certain set of parameters, it’ll automatically take X amount of days to finish. This leaves you with limited flexibility and could certainly cause a major inconvenience to your tenants.

Have you ever wondered how or why asphalt pavement degrades? Here in Hawaii, we do not have harsh winters that cause freeze-thaw damage where water damages pavement by switching between solid and liquid states. But other harmful elements such as UV radiation and rainfall are prevalent in the islands. While it is assumed that asphalt pavements will last twenty years or more, the truth is that Hawaii’s environment can accelerate the rate of pavement failure.

You might say you cannot afford to maintain your parking lot’s asphalt pavement.

I say you cannot afford to NOT maintain your asphalt pavement. Here’s why:

Your asphalt pavement begins to deteriorate immediately. Day 1 of your asphalt’s life will be the best condition your asphalt will ever be. Beginning of Day 2, your asphalt will gradually deteriorate over time if not protected and maintained.

(Click here to schedule a site visit and we'll provide recommendations on how you can prevent large asphalt repair costs.)

The University of Hawaii Cancer Center opened a new building at the John A. Burns School of Medicine in February 2013. The building has five floors totaling 21,000 square feet of light colored porcelain tile on their walkways and common areas. Management needed a cost-effective solution to keep maintenance of the porcelain tile simple so more time could be devoted to the exterior upkeep.

Challenges:

Located in Kakaako, the building has an open-air design and is about 100 yards from the ocean—leaving the porcelain tiles exposed to salt air and UV rays.

I believe that educating clients about their parking lot maintenance needs is critically important in developing a well thought-out maintenance plan. You not only need to know what kind of repair work needs to be done, but you also need to come up with a maintenance schedule to prevent repair work from negatively impacting your business and tenants.

I would like to share with you a project that I recently worked on. I was asked by our client; a property manager, to visit a large, aged, and not very well maintained parking lot. She asked for my assessment of the parking lot’s condition and for my asphalt pavement maintenance recommendations. While walking the lot I noticed that:

Most property managers will wax (and strip) their tile because it’s the only maintenance process they are familiar with.But I want to let you know you have a choice! An alternative to waxing is using a sealer.

Sealers, like waxing, prevent visible stains, smell, wear and scratches on tile and grout. However, sealers like MicroGuard have some great advantages over wax, especially when it comes to reducing maintenance costs.

Below area couple reasons why you should consider using a sealer on tile and grout (as opposed to waxing).

Hawaii sees constant sunshine year round, so you may be running your air conditioner more often to keep your home or business cool. The summer months can especially put a strain on your electric bill. Jeffery Orloff, former About.com Guide, offers 7 easy tips to make your AC work more efficiently this summer.

Check out his article here:Top 7 Make Your Air Conditioner Work More Efficiently

Here’s a brief overview of his 7 tips:

As a property manager or owner, each day you’ve got a hundred items on your “to-do” list and the challenge is prioritizing each item. What needs to be taken care of now? What can wait? The problem is, if you wait too long, a small, minor issue that “can wait,” could turn into a large, costly issue down the road.

Below are five simple Dos & Don’t's for proper parking lot and facility maintenance:

Depending on who you talk to there are many answers to that question.

Most people think that asphalt is what “black top” roads or parking lots are made of. That is partially correct. The material that the “black top” is made of is called asphalt concrete.

Asphalt concrete is made up of gravel, sand, and asphalt cement. Everything is combined in a heated mixer and the mixture is laid down on the road and is compacted with a heavy roller to make the roads we drive on.

The asphalt cement is the glue that holds the gravel and sand together to make the “black top” roads and parking lots we drive on. But that begs the next question: “where does asphalt cement come from?”

There are two answers:

Resurfacing a parking lot or driveway is a large cost that not everyone budgets for. In order to extend the life of your pavement, take a proactive approach and consider doing some Pavement Preventive Maintenance (PPM). The concept behind PPM is to keep your good pavement good and not letting it show signs of deterioration. Even if your pavement shows some signs of deterioration, PPM can help to get a few extra years out of your pavement. Here are some PPM tips that can help you to save both your pavement and hard earned dollars: