When designing your asphalt parking lot, you, as the property owner, should direct your contractor toward quality and dependability rather than merely cost. Make the investment now in deeper depths of base and blacktop. This may result in greater initial expenditures, but the investment will undoubtedly pay off in higher quality and reliability. In addition, paying more upfront for increased dependability may result in lower maintenance and repair expenditures in the long run.
How To Calculate What the Right Asphalt Thickness Should Be
The thicknesses of the base and surface courses have a direct relationship with parking lot reliability.
The ideal thickness is determined by the soil quality of your property and the type of traffic you anticipate on your property.
Heavy trucks are more difficult to drive on asphalt than passenger automobiles.
Also read: 3 Signs That Your Asphalt Driveway Needs Repaving
Your contractor may opt to install an aggregate layer as well as an asphalt layer, or he may lay full-depth asphalt.
In any case, the surface must be installed on top of a solid, stable subbase that has been adequately compacted.
A heavy roller should be able to drive over the subbase with no tire traces.
Full-depth asphalt should be at least 4 inches thick for a light-duty parking lot on an excellent subgrade. The thickness of a heavy-duty parking lot on a weak subgrade should be 10 to 12 inches.
Some contractors recommend a total depth of at least 9 inches for parking lots that use both aggregate and hot-mix asphalt.
The aggregate-to-asphalt ratio will be determined by the anticipated traffic. Other experts advise substantially thicker layers for really high traffic.
Areas of your lot that experience the greatest traffic may necessitate a deeper layer of asphalt than other portions of your property. It may be prudent, for example, to raise the thickness at the lot’s access and exit points, as well as along the path where delivery vehicles drive.