How To Water A New Asphalt Driveway
What is the Length of Asphalt Cure Time?
The night is dark and full of terrors, but the day is light and full of hope. What does this mean for your asphalt cure time? Well, it means that you should be aware of the darkness when curing your asphalt. Darkness can slow down or even stop the process if left unchecked!
For a start, the darkness has to do with the actual curing process, which is when your asphalt reaches its final strength. The reason for this is that it takes time for the binder in asphalt (the gluey part) to dry and cure. This happens faster if you have more air flow around the hot mix while it cures – sunlight provides just enough heat to help accelerate this drying process!
If there are other materials involved in your pavement being installed at night, then darkness should not be an issue because these shouldn’t affect how fast things set up anyway. However, if you’re installing a large parking lot or full road project overnight alone, ensure you get plenty of airflow so all of those cross-hatched aggregate pieces don’t warp during installation due to lack of airflow.
If you are coating your asphalt with a sealcoat , then darkness is not an issue because the curing process stops once the solvent evaporates and leaves behind only binder material – which happens within minutes after application . However, if this sealcoating job is going to happen in dark conditions over newly placed hot mix (during or shortly after installation), make sure there’s enough air flow so that everything cures as quickly as possible! Finally, keep in mind that although it takes time for asphalt to cure during daylight hours, even more work can be done at night when there isn’t any heat involved – such as applying tack coatings and crack sealing !