Parking Lot Striping: 4 important tips for Do it Right?

Parking Lot Striping: Some forms of parking lot care are more common than others. Most property managers are familiar with seal coating and crack filling. However, there is one more type of parking lot maintenance that is often overlooked — striping.

Parking lot striping offers a number of advantages, including:

• It improves the overall appearance of your parking lot.
• It lowers the risk of vehicle door damage.
• Fix striping flaws — fix stripes that are too close, straighten out crooked lines, or ensure your disabled parking spaces are properly labeled.
• Facilitate better traffic flow.
• Increase your parking lot safety.
• Reduce the likelihood of legal liability.
• Maintain ADA compliance on your premises.

If the striping on your parking lot is fading or no longer visible, it may cause several problems, including traffic slowdowns and pedestrian safety concerns. This is the perfect time to consider re-striping your parking lot to breathe new life into your parking lot.

We have a few parking lot striping tips that will help you on your next project:

Weather

Weather conditions will have an impact on parking lot striping projects.

The contractor should closely monitor weather forecasts to ensure there is no prospect of rain or strong winds. The job should be rescheduled for a better day if there is a substantial risk of rain on the day in question. Strong winds will also make it challenging to stripe.

Reflective glass beads

If you want to improve visibility at night, you can have the parking lot striping contractor add reflective glass beads to the paint, which will make it more visible to oncoming traffic. This application can be completed by hand or by machine, and it is not prohibitively expensive either.

See that the glass bead material is applied while the paint is still wet to get the maximum adhesion possible.

Amount of coats

Have your parking lot striping contractor apply two coats of water-based paint after the asphalt has been allowed to cool if your asphalt parking lot has recently undergone repair work or is brand new.

The first layer will be absorbed by the asphalt and will therefore be less visible, whereas the second application will make the parking spots more noticeable.

Removing old striping

If you are considering changing the layout of your existing parking lot, you will likely need to remove the old markings before you can stripe the new layout.

The old lines can be removed in a few ways, such as having the old paint sandblasted off or simply “blacking out” the existing paint.

The sandblasting technique is effective for removing paint from your pavement — however, it can get dusty, which is why most businesses prefer to have the work done after hours. It is also slightly more expensive than the blackout method. Even though using the blackout technique can save you a few bucks, it will not completely remove the old stripes. Your existing stripes are painted over with a layer of black paint to blend them into the asphalt — the new layout will be stripped after that.

Most businesses opt for the blackout technique for their asphalt pavement layout, and they also seal coat over the old surface to cover up the blacked-out lines.

Conclusion

Maintaining your parking lot’s re-striping and overall appearance is vital and should be at the top of your “to-do” list. After all, when customers arrive at your place of business, the parking lot is the first thing they will notice. Your customers will have a positive experience from the minute they pull into your parking lot until they leave your business.

Make sure to speak with your pavement contractor and ask questions if you want to learn more about parking lot striping.

Address

Commonwealth Paving, 136 Outerloop, Louisville, Kentucky 40214
Phone: 502-459-7283, Fax: 502-456-2678

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