Driveway Sealcoating in New Orleans, LA

Asphalt Sealcoating

Sealcoat isn't paint and it isn't a patch. It's a liquid barrier, asphalt emulsion or coal tar cut with sand, laid over the surface to stop UV, oxygen and gas drips from chewing up the binder that holds your asphalt together. Lose that binder and the blacktop turns gray, then it ravels, and you start finding your driveway in the gutter a handful of stones at a time.

Our sun does most of that damage and the four o'clock downpour finishes the thought. Water that soaks through an unsealed surface goes straight into a base sitting on ground that already moves plenty around here.

So the rule I go by: fresh asphalt cures six months to a year before its first coat, then every two to three years after. Cracks get filled before anything else, because sealcoat bridges nothing wider than a hair. Two coats, hand work on the edges, and keep tires off 24 to 48 hours in August humidity. If the surface is too far gone, that's a New Orleans Asphalt Paving conversation instead.

Asphalt Emulsion Sealcoat

Asphalt emulsion is the water based option, and it's what I reach for on most residential driveway sealcoating around here. The sealer is asphalt suspended in water with clay, fine sand and additives, so it cures by evaporation instead of soaking in. With our humidity, that matters. I want a dry window of four to six hours per coat, because a three o'clock thunderstorm over Mid-City will send a fresh coat straight down the gutter.

Two thin coats, squeegeed and cut in clean at the edges, beat one thick pour every time. Thick looks great going down and cracks like dried mud by spring.

Emulsion is mild smelling, takes foot traffic in about a day and cars in two. Fresh New Orleans Asphalt Paving needs 60 to 90 days to cure before any asphalt sealcoating goes near it.

Blacktop Sealcoating

Blacktop, asphalt, tar drive, whatever your granddad called it, it's the same surface and it fails the same way down here. The sun cooks the binder out of the top eighth of an inch until it goes gray and sandy, and then every afternoon thunderstorm works its way into what's left. Blacktop sealcoating puts that black film back over the aggregate so water sheets off instead of soaking in.

Two things ruin it, and neither is the sealer. One is a dirty surface. If nobody blows out the leaf litter and scrubs the oil drip where your truck parks, the coat lets go in sheets by next spring. The other is timing. We won't sealcoat with rain inside a few hours or when it's too cool to cure, and we won't touch a new drive that hasn't had six months or so to harden off.

If the blacktop is already cracked through and moving under your feet, that's a New Orleans Asphalt Paving repair, not something a coating will hide.

Jet Black Sealcoat

That deep black everybody wants when they pull in the driveway? It's real, and it's also temporary. Fresh sealer goes down looking wet and dries to a flat, even black, dark as a Saints jersey on a Sunday. Then our sun gets to work. Expect the true jet black to hold six to twelve months before it settles into charcoal, which is normal and not a failure.

What ruins the look is sealer stretched thin with too much water. You get streaks, brush marks and gray patches over the aggregate. We put down two measured coats, brushed into the edges, and give it 24 to 48 hours before tires touch it. Longer if the humidity won't break.

And if the surface is crumbling underneath, that's a New Orleans Asphalt Paving job, not a sealcoating job.

Jet Black Driveway Sealcoating

That deep, wet-looking black everybody wants? It comes from two things: a sealer that hasn't been drowned in water, and a driveway that was actually cleaned first. Oil spots get primed, edges get cut in by hand with a squeegee, and the field gets a second coat once the first has flashed off. Over-thin the mix and you get about six months of black before it goes the color of a gray T-shirt that's been through the wash too many times.

Cure time in this town is its own animal. Humidity slows everything down, so I want 24 to 48 hours before your tires touch it, and I won't start a driveway sealcoating job with an afternoon thunderstorm sitting on the radar.

Sand loading is the other half. It hides old oxidation and gives you grip when the driveway is wet.

Same crew handles New Orleans Asphalt Paving when the surface underneath is too far gone for asphalt sealcoating to fix.

Parking Lot Sealcoating

Driveways are one thing. A lot is a business, and the hour we close it off you've got people circling the block looking for somewhere else to park. So parking lot sealcoating gets planned around your hours, not ours. We'll do half at a time, or come in Saturday morning when the office is empty, and we're honest about the fact that a coat needs a full day of dry weather before tires touch it. In August, that means watching the 3 p.m. thunderstorm the same way everybody else in this city does.

Oil drip zones under the stalls get degreased and primed first, or the sealer peels off in sheets by spring. Drive lanes and entrances take a second coat because that's where the turning tires scrub hardest. Then we restripe, and that's the part plenty of sealcoating companies rush. Faded ADA stalls and a hard-to-read fire lane are a problem long before they're a paving problem.

Bigger issues, like alligatored corners or a failed base, fall under our New Orleans Asphalt Paving work instead of a sealer.

Parking Lot Sealcoating And Striping

Striping is where a lot of parking lot sealcoating jobs fall apart. The seal goes down black and pretty, then somebody rolls the lines out by eye and your stalls wander like a second line down Magazine Street.

We measure off the old layout before the sealer ever comes out, so the paint goes back where it belongs. Four inch stall lines, fire lanes, arrows, and accessible stalls with a proper access aisle and symbol. We use waterborne traffic paint, set to touch in about half an hour on a dry day, longer when August humidity is sitting on us.

Sealer needs a full day to cure before paint. Rush that and the lines lift. We stripe half a lot at a time so you keep parking, and any patching first is New Orleans Asphalt Paving work we do ourselves.

Concrete Sealcoating

Here's the part nobody likes to hear: the coal tar or asphalt emulsion we use on a blacktop drive does not belong on concrete. It won't bond, it'll flake off in sheets by the second summer, and you'll be scraping black confetti out of your grass. Concrete takes a different product entirely, usually a penetrating silane siloxane that soaks in and repels water, or an acrylic film if you want the wet look.

The prep is the same religion, though. We degrease the oil drips, wash it down, and re-caulk the expansion joints with self-leveling urethane before anything gets sealed. Skip that and water sits in the joint, which in our soil means movement.

Figure a day of work, foot traffic that evening, cars back on it after two days. Slab cracked past sealing? Then we're talking New Orleans Asphalt Paving or a concrete replacement, not driveway sealcoating.

Paving And Sealcoating

Paving and sealcoating aren't rivals, they're the same job at different stages. Sealer is a raincoat, not a backbone. It keeps water, gas drips and that brutal July sun off the binder, and it does nothing for a base that's already given up. So when I walk a driveway and see alligator cracking across the tire tracks, or a spot that sinks under my heel after a rain, we patch or cut out and rebuild first. Skip that step and you've put lipstick on a pig, and the cracks telegraph right back through in one wet season.

Fresh asphalt needs six to twelve months to cure before the first coat goes on. Too early and you trap oils and get a soft, tacky mess.

If the mat's past saving, we're into New Orleans Asphalt Paving instead: an overlay or a full rebuild, then sealcoat once it's cured.

Asphalt Paving Sealcoating

New asphalt has to cure before anybody puts sealer on it. The light oils in a fresh mat need to gas off, and in our climate that's ninety days at the very least, longer if we paved you in January. Seal it too soon and you lock those oils in, and by the first real August the coating lifts off in sheets. So when we do New Orleans Asphalt Paving and sealcoating on the same property, the seal is a separate trip on the calendar, not an add on at the end of the day.

After that, asphalt sealcoating is maintenance, not decoration. Gulf sun oxidizes a blacktop surface gray, gas and oil drips soften the binder, and water sits in every hairline crack until it opens. Driveway sealcoating on a two to three year rhythm keeps that from becoming a repaving conversation.

Holland Paving Sealcoating

Here's what our name on a driveway actually means. We show up, cut the grass back off the edges, blow the surface clean, and scrub the oil drips under where your truck parks, because sealer won't stick to a spot that's been soaking up motor oil since Katrina. Then we hand-cut the edges with a brush and pull the body of the drive with a squeegee, two coats where the surface is thirsty.

We watch the sky. Sealing at noon in July with a thunderstorm building over the lake is how you get a streaky, washed-out mess, so we start early and let it cure.

Most of our driveway sealcoating work comes from folks who already know us for New Orleans Asphalt Paving, and the sealcoating side runs on the same crew, same standards.

Sealmaster Sealcoating

We buy SealMaster material because what comes out of the drum in March is the same as what comes out in September, and that consistency is most of the battle. Sealer straight from the pail is mostly liquid until somebody adds sand and additive, and that mixing station is where sealcoat contractors quietly separate themselves. We mix to spec: sand by weight, latex additive measured, water kept inside the allowed dilution instead of stretched to make one drum cover two driveways. Over-thin it and you get a handsome black slab in June that's gray and thirsty again before the Saints play a home game.

Two coats, cut in by brush at the edges, squeegeed and sprayed through the field. It's the same product we keep on hand for New Orleans Asphalt Paving work when a fresh mat is finally ready for its first coat.

What the job involves

Every driveway sealcoating job starts with a blower, a wire broom and a stiff scrub, not a squeegee. We pull the crabgrass out of the edges, scrub oil spots with detergent and spot-prime them so the sealer actually sticks, then fill anything wider than about a quarter inch with hot rubberized crack filler. Skip that step and you have sealed water into the cracks instead of out of them, which is how a driveway goes alligator two summers later.

Then it's two coats, squeegee-pulled and brushed by hand along the garage apron and the sidewalk line, with sand mixed in for grip because a wet slick driveway in a Gentilly downpour helps nobody.

Weather runs the schedule here. We need pavement above 50 degrees, dry for a day after, so we start early and watch the afternoon pop-up storms that show up like clockwork in August.

Most residential jobs are done in a day. Stay off it overnight, keep the car off for two.

If the surface is too far gone for sealer, that's a New Orleans Asphalt Paving conversation instead, and I'll tell you straight.

What it costs

Square footage is where sealcoat pricing starts, and it's nowhere near where it finishes. A straight shot of driveway in Lakeview tapes out in two minutes. A horseshoe drive off Napoleon with a live oak root lifting one corner, an apron running into the sidewalk and grass crept in over the edges is a different afternoon entirely.

What moves the number: how much crack filling has to happen first, whether oil stains under where the truck parks need a primer so the sealer will actually bond, how badly the edges need cut back, and whether you want one coat or two. Two coats on a drive that takes daily sun is money well spent. One coat on raw, dried-out asphalt is lipstick, and by next August you'll see it.

Call us and we'll measure yours and give you a real figure, not a per-foot guess over the phone.

And if the surface is cracked past saving, sealer isn't the answer anyway. That's a conversation about New Orleans Asphalt Paving.

Why choose us for this

Your drive's gone gray, the edges are crumbling like a stale beignet, and you'd rather think about almost anything else. Fair enough.

So here's what we don't do.

No number that grows: What we write down is what you pay, unless you add work.

No disappearing crew: We don't start a job in Metairie before yours is finished and swept.

No pressure to sign: The estimate is free, it holds, and you owe us nothing if you pass.

No mess in your yard: Overspray, empty pails, tape on your grass, all of it leaves with us.

I'll tell you straight: we're not the cheapest of the driveway sealcoating contractors you'll call. We fill cracks first, hand-cut the edges, and put down two coats with real cure time between them, and that costs hours some sealcoating companies skip to get to the next drive by lunch.

The same crew handling our New Orleans Asphalt Paving work lays the sealer, going on 19 years of it now. You hire us once and forget about the driveway for a few summers.

Frequently asked questions