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Five kinds of work on a Northeast Ohio lot
The order matters more here than almost anywhere. Winter finds every shortcut and opens it.
A parking lot is a structure. The asphalt on top is the wearing course, and it is the thinnest and least important layer in the assembly. Underneath it sits compacted aggregate whose job is to spread a wheel load out until the soil beneath can carry it, and under that, in most of Cuyahoga County, glacial till and lake-plain clay that does not drain quickly.
Everything below is a decision about which of those layers is actually failing. Cleveland makes that decision unusually consequential, because the freeze-thaw cycle here does not merely age a pavement — it exploits it. Water that gets into a base in November is ice by December, and ice occupies more room than the water did. A lot that would decline gently in a mild climate comes apart here on a schedule.
One word, three projects, and a wide gap between them
Three genuinely different projects are sold under the single word paving. They differ by a factor of several in what they cost and by about a decade in what they buy, and what decides between them is underneath the lot where nobody has looked.
Winning the pavement argument one budget season at a time
The manager who gets pavement funded is rarely the one with the most alarming photographs. It is the one who can show, in mechanism rather than adjectives, what one more deferred season does to the property.
Five repair methods, and what each one actually buys back
Very little of the repair money wasted on commercial property in this county goes to poor workmanship. It goes to a sound method applied to a situation that needed a different one.
The hole is where the failure surfaced, not where it began
Filling a pothole and repairing one are two different purchases, and on most lots in this county only the first one ever gets bought. That is why the same holes are on the work order every March.
Two products sold together, and only one of them protects the lot
On most commercial lots in Cuyahoga County the coating gets approved and the cracks stay open, which is the wrong way round. Closing the openings before winter returns more than any surface treatment can.
If you manage the property rather than own it, the useful framing is different again: what has to happen this budget year to stop a repair bill compounding, and what can defer without the deferral costing more than the work. Those pages are written with that question in mind.
Talk through your site
Start with the address, roughly how many square feet, and photographs of the worst areas and anywhere water sits after rain.