For HOA boards, condo associations, apartment managers and commercial property managers across Wake, Durham, Johnston and Orange counties. One vendor for asphalt sealing, crack filling, patching, striping and paving, quoted in a form a board can vote on and scheduled so residents and tenants know what is coming.
In a lot of newer Triangle communities the homeowners' driveways are concrete and the association's asphalt is everything else: the pool and clubhouse parking, overflow lots, trail head pull-offs, maintenance yards and, in some townhome and condo communities, private streets the association maintains instead of the town. Apartment communities add long drive aisles, carport rows and compactor pads. It is easy for that asphalt to get forgotten until a resident trips in a pothole.
Sealing, crack filling, cut-out repairs, striping and paving under one quote means one contact, one schedule, one invoice, and nobody blaming the last contractor. It also means the person looking at your lot has no reason to sell you a coat of sealer over a failed drive lane, because the repair is theirs to do as well.
Most associations set the following year's budget in the fall. A quote in hand before that meeting can go straight into a line item. Ours comes back as a measured area and one price per square foot covering sealing, crack filling, small patches and restriping the existing layout. Larger repairs are listed separately with their own price, so a board can approve the sealing now and schedule a lane rebuild for later, or the other way round.
If a board needs a number earlier than a site visit allows, a first budget figure can be taken from an aerial and firmed up on the property before anything is booked.
Each property gets its own one page sheet: what was measured, its condition, what is recommended now, what can wait and roughly when, and the price. A manager with eight communities gets eight sheets, not one blended number, so each board sees its own property and nothing else. The sheets are written to be forwarded as they are.
Lots and streets are split into sections, each with a written date, so a notice can go out a week or two ahead telling residents which cars need to move and when. Sealer needs 24 to 48 hours before cars go back on, so sections are arranged to leave a way in and out and somewhere to park. The summer thunderstorm pattern here means a date can move at short notice; when it does, the manager hears first, and the replacement date is agreed before residents are told.
Pool and clubhouse lots are busiest from late spring through summer, which is also when afternoon storms are most frequent. The easy answer is to do amenity lots in April or early May, before opening, or in September after the season closes. Booking that work at the fall budget meeting means the spring dates can be set well ahead and announced with the pool opening notice.
A reserve study puts a date on resurfacing. Sealing every few years and filling cracks each time pushes that date back, because it keeps the sun off the binder and the storm water out of the clay base. Fixing small failures while they are small does the same. The cheapest pavement plan for an association is a boring one: a regular cycle, repairs before they spread, and a full repave only when the base genuinely needs it.
A private street is a bigger responsibility than a parking lot. It carries every resident's car twice a day, the trash truck every week and the occasional moving van, and it usually has no alternative route while it is being worked on. Streets are sealed in halves or in short runs with access kept open, and cut-out repairs at the turning heads and mailbox clusters, where the heavy vehicles stop and turn, are dealt with first. Where a private street meets a public one, the joint and the apron belong partly to somebody else, so that edge is checked against the town's rules before any rebuilding is quoted.
A management company with communities in Cary, Durham, Clayton and Chapel Hill deals with four sets of town rules. Sealing and striping in place rarely need a permit, but rebuilding an entrance apron or a section of private street meeting a public road can, and the rules differ town to town. The county pages for Wake, Durham, Johnston and Orange set out what we have confirmed for each.
Send the address of one community to start, or a list. Say when your budget meeting is. Each property comes back on its own sheet. The work is carried out by local independent contractors, with one business answering for every property. For the detail on lots, see parking lot sealcoating and striping.
