Most of the asphalt in the Triangle that is not a road is a parking lot. Church lots, daycare drop-off loops, strip centers, offices, apartment communities and HOA amenity lots. This page covers what those lots need, how a lot is measured and priced, and how the work fits around a week that does not stop for a contractor.
A lot here takes the same punishment as a driveway, at a bigger scale and with heavier vehicles. Long hot summers oxidise the surface until it grays and ravels. Frequent afternoon thunderstorms push water into every open seam and crack, and the clay subgrade under most Triangle lots softens when it stays wet. Garbage trucks and delivery vans then do the rest, in the same few places every week: the entrance, the lane past the door, the dumpster pad.
The parking bays themselves usually outlast all of that by years. A good plan treats the two differently.
A first budget number can come off an aerial photo if you need something quickly for a board or an owner. The number a job is booked on is measured on the property, because aerials miss islands, curbs and the way a lot has been patched over the years.
The quote is the measured area and one price per square foot. That price covers the sealing, the crack filling, small patches and putting the existing lines back. There is no per stall charge and no charge by the foot of crack. A lot with heavy cracking or a lot of markings gets a higher rate rather than extra lines on the invoice. Larger repairs, where areas have to be cut out and rebuilt, are priced separately in writing so they can be approved or scheduled on their own.
Sealer needs 24 to 48 hours before traffic goes back on, so the schedule is built around when your lot is actually empty. A church lot is quiet midweek. A daycare lot is empty at the weekend. A shop lot can be done in sections with an entrance always open, or overnight into a quiet morning. The summer thunderstorm pattern means work starts early and a day can move at short notice; moving it costs nothing.
Plenty of Triangle neighborhoods have concrete driveways and asphalt everywhere else the association owns: the pool lot, the clubhouse lot, mailbox pull-offs and, in some townhome and condo communities, private streets the association maintains rather than the town. Apartment communities are almost all asphalt.
Boards and managers set next year's budget in the fall. A quote that arrives in time for that meeting, with one price per square foot the board can drop straight into a line, is worth more to a treasurer than a cheaper number that turns up in March. Work can be split into sections, each with written dates residents can be told well ahead, so cars are moved once and nobody is surprised.
Sealing and crack filling on a regular cycle is also what keeps paving out of the resurfacing line of a reserve study for longer. Managers with several communities get one sheet per property. The property managers page covers that in more detail.
Watch a Triangle lot during a summer storm and you can see its future. Water sheets toward the inlets, and wherever the grade is off it sits in a shallow pond until the sun takes it. Those ponds are where the surface softens and ravels first. Red clay silt washed off bare banks and landscaping beds collects in the low corners and around the drains, and sealer will not bond to it. Before a lot is coated the inlets and gutters get cleared, the silt gets scraped out, and any area that holds water is pointed out on the quote, because a coat of sealer cannot change where water runs. If a section needs regrading or rebuilding to drain, that is priced as repair work.
If large parts of a lot are alligator cracked, rutted or holding water, sealing it just paints over the problem. Sometimes the right answer is to rebuild the drive lanes and seal the bays. Sometimes it is an overlay or full repaving, covered on the paving page. You will be told which, and why, in writing.
Send the address and the best contact, and say if there is a deadline such as a budget meeting or an event. The work is carried out by local independent contractors, with one business answering for it.
