When asphalt pavement comes in contact with harsh weather, especially during winter, it can weaken you parking lot or driveway and ultimately cause cracks or other problems. Here are a couple more asphalt flaws you should be well aware of.
- Pot Holes: There are bowl-shaped depressions evident on the pavement surface. Although some are small, they can extend until the base. Most have sharp edges and vertical sides at the top of the hole. These can be caused by moisture infiltration and is the end result of alligator cracking that has been left untreated.
- Bird Baths or Depressions: These depressions can easily be spotted after a rain because they tend to be filled with water. Depressions lightly lower elevations than surrounding pavement.
- Rutting: Rutting can be caused by various factors which include insufficient pavement thickness, lack of compaction of the asphalt, stone base or soil, weak asphalt mixes or moisture infiltration and causes channelized depressions in the wheel-tracks.
- Shoving: Also called wash-boarding because of the characteristic formation of ripples across a pavement. This usually occurs in places where there are severe horizontal stresses such as intersections that is caused by excess asphalt, excess fine aggregate, rounded aggregate, or a weak granular base.
- Upheaval: Owing to expansive soils that tend to swell because of moisture or ice under the pavement, it can result to distension of the sub-grade and ultimately an upward movement in a pavement.
- Raveling: This is basically the on-going separation of aggregate particles in a pavement from the surface downward or from the edges inward. Fine aggregates wears away and leaves small pock marks on the pavement surface. When erosion continues, particles become larger and larger and are broken free. After which, pavement will just look rough and jagged. One reason why this happens is when asphalt is places too late in the season.
Be sure you are in the hands of experienced company to be sure that these problems or failures will not be experienced.