Keeping your driveway looking slick, smooth and clean is more easily achievable than you might think. In fact, you don’t need to spend a ton of money and time in order to keep the area surrounding your home looking more than fine. By supplying yourself with a quality sealer, you are increasing your driveway’s durability immensely, at minimal cost. Water is usually the one to blame for your driveway looking filthy, stained and causing it to crack, because of its property of freezing. When frozen, a force with enough strength to break concrete is created and cracks, pits and flakes occur. In order to prevent all this, follow these guidelines.
Why It’s Important to Properly Seal Your Driveway
Well, it really isn’t, if you don’t mind it looking all cracked and dirty. If you do care about what the area around your home looks like, however, you will not only need to seal it properly, but repeat the process every couple of years, at least.
Luckily, the whole process is a breeze to go through, generally inexpensive and quite rewarding. If you seal your driveway properly and frequently, you can rest assured that it will maintain its good, fresh looks of the day when you installed it. Sealers come in various gloss levels, ranging from no-gloss, all the way to high-gloss.
If you are an owner of a colored concrete driveway, you might see a white powdery residue on its surface, called efflorescence. Well, unless you properly coat it, that is.
However, keeping your driveway stain and residue-free isn’t the only benefit of using sealers. Perhaps even more importantly, properly coated driveways won’t experience cracks, bumps, flakes and pits, which not only tend to look terrible, but can cause damage to your car’s tires, which is yet another easily avoidable expense.Although sealing is a breeze of a process, if you want to make sure it is done properly, you can always hire a contractor. Even if you hire professional help, however, you shouldn’t refrain from properly informing yourself online about the types and brands of particular driveway finishes – you should always take part in your home maintenance.
Additionally, sealers do not solely apply to driveways – patios and other concrete surfaces can benefit from these as well.
Steps
- Cure it – You can’t approach coating your driveway right away after it’s installed – giving it time to cure is crucial. Only when your new driveway is a month old, should you engage the process of applying a penetrating sealer. First of all, rid your driveway of debris, leaves, mud and dirt with a broom and a pressure washer. 24 hours after letting it dry, you can approach the sealing process.
- Applying the sealer – This is done by either brushing, spraying or rolling the water-based siloxane sealer onto the concrete. It is vital that you spread the sealer evenly until a faint white color appears on the driveway, before letting it dry. You should pay attention to the weather forecasts when going through this process, as dry weather is the name of the game here. Additionally, always be mindful of the 24-hour rule, even though sealers dry a mere couple of hours after they’re applied, because it is crucial that the sealer properly adheres to the driveway.
If you follow all the mentioned cleanup directions and allow it to properly dry by always following the 24-hour rule, you can rest assured that your driveway will remain spotless and impeccably clean. Lastly, never opt for allowing a minimal amount of time, designated on the product you’re using, to pass before moving on to the next step of coating your concrete surface.