This article looks at answering the question: how do I maintain my driveway? Find out how you can maintain your driveway and driveway maintenance tips.

How Do You Maintain a Driveway?

There is a major part of your property that can constantly be staring at you and begging for some attention. It is often the part of your home that you will see first when you arrive at the property. 

That's right; it is the driveway. It is very common for people to consider investing in giving their driveway a new look, so it has more of an inviting appearance.

These days there are more cars on the roads than ever before, and this can mean that cars can start to take over a property's outdoor garden space. 

Unfortunately, there are no driveways which are completely maintenance-free. However, by giving your driveway the correct amount of care and attention, you can boost the longevity and appearance of the home area, which is very often forgotten about. This is a guide on how to preserve and maintain the delightful appearance of your home's driveway.

How Often Should Your Driveway Be Sealed?

If you are a user of a tarmac driveway, then you need to think about having it resealed regularly in order to achieve the best results. Unfortunately, the weather here in the UK is highly turbulent.

The constantly changing weather means that it is advisable for you to have your driveway resealed more often than if you lived elsewhere in the world. The combination of wet seasons, along with dry, warm weather, leads to the driveways in the UK being more vulnerable to all kinds of different surfacing issues. Sealing your driveway every three or four years is a useful rule of thumb. 

However, there are some people that prefer to have their driveways sealed once per year in order to ensure that their initial investment is properly protected. Resealing your driveway is the best method to make sure that the quality of your driveway’s surface is preserved and permeation issues don't occur.

As a bonus to this, maintaining your driveway in this way can help to save you a lot of unnecessary costs in the future, as it will be unlikely that your driveway will require any repairs. Sealing your driveway can prevent more large-scale issues from happening in the long term by ensuring that concrete cracks are kept at bay.

Driveway Maintenance Tips

 Prevent cracks

When it comes to driveways, prevention can simply mean sealing concrete on an annual basis and sealing tarmac every three or four years in order to prevent water from penetrating, freezing, and eventually cracking.

Shrub and tree roots can cause cracks in the driveway by pushing up from underneath the surface. The solution to this is to remove trees that are nearby your driveway or have an expert trim their roots away.

 Minimise water on the driveway

We recommend clearing out a two or three-inch strip from around the edges of the driveway in order to create a runoff zone for water and snow.

This will certainly reduce the chances of the fluid penetrating the surface. You should also ensure that downpipes empty into your garden rather than directly onto your driveway.

 Don’t salt cement

Cement salt and other chemical de-icers can penetrate right through surfaces and lead to cracks forming. Both need to be repaired as soon as possible. Instead of using salt, you should use a snowblower or shovel to get rid of snow and then use an alternative, such as coffee grounds, sand, alfalfa meal, or kitty litter, in order to make the surfaces less slippery.

In order to melt the ice, you should consider spraying the surface with sugar beet juice, this might sound ridiculous, but it actually lowers the melting point of the ice significantly and is considered to be effective in temperatures even as low as -20°F.

 Plough carefully

When ploughing your driveway, raise the blade of the snow plough high enough to make sure that it does not scrape and damage the surface of the driveway.

If you are using a shovel, try using a plastic shovel when working on uneven surfaces in order to reduce the risk of the tool catching on the driveway and damaging the surface. You can then either push aside the snow and use a shovel to remove it or just remove the snow a few inches at a time.

 Protect the edges

Although it may not seem this way, many driveways are not designed for very heavy machinery to be sitting on top of it. This is especially true with the edges, which are vulnerable and likely to chip when under excessive weight.

So when you are parking your vehicle, try to make sure that the car is parked away from all the edges. If there is any remodelling work being done on your home, then ask the engineers not to park their construction vehicles on your driveway so no damage is caused.

Ripon Exterior Cleaning offer driveway cleaning throughout Stockton-on-Tees and the surrounding areas. We perform each of our driveway cleaning services with the highest attention and efficiency.