Why should potholes be fixed?
Everyone complains about the lack of pothole repair, but do you know what a pothole is really? Nobody knows, and there are different theories on how the name came to be. The word ‘pot’ in Middle English meant “a deep hole.”
Today, it refers to the cylindrical shape of a cooking pot. The word ‘hole’ is self-explanatory. Put the two words together, and you get potholes, cylindrical holes that cause significant damage when you drive into potholes with a car until the city or state gets around to doing pothole repair.
Pothole repairs take money and time, and for businesses, those two things are put to other uses, so parking lots remain riddled with potholes. For personal driveways, money and time aren’t always plentiful.
While you may think that pothole repairs aren’t a priority, even if you are the only one that t goes in and out of the driveway, here are three reasons why you need to get those pothole repairs done sooner rather than later:
1. Safety Hazard
Potholes are safety hazards for both vehicles and pedestrians alike. A property owner or manager needs to take responsibility for fixing these paving issues promptly. An informed driver is aware that potholes can cause damage to their suspension and tires. They’ll swerve around them or slow to a crawling pace to go through them. Pedestrians will walk around them. However, both pedestrians and vehicles are at risk of walking into one that is obscured by rain or snow. The cost for pothole repairs isn’t as much as your insurance or a possible lawsuit could be.
2. Appearance
An occasional pothole is something unavoidable. However, multiple potholes are unsightly, and neglecting pothole repairs makes you unattractive as a property owner or manager. Pothole repairs in property improvement, and for a parking lot where you have rental properties, you’ll attract more potential tenants when the parking lot looks good.
3. Cost Efficiency
Delaying pothole repairs for better budget time is never a good plan. The longer you postpone repairing potholes, the bigger they get, and the more they will cost to repair. An unrepaired pothole will also create more potholes as the water fills the holes and spreads under the top layer of asphalt or concrete. Pothole repairs today will save you money tomorrow!
What are the effects of potholes?
As the property owner, you may not realize it, but people that are hitting the potholes in your parking lot could be sustaining a lot of damage to their vehicle:
- Breaking the shocks and suspension
- Losing control of their vehicle
- Causing accidents
- Broken wheels flattened tires
- Vehicles knocked out of alignment
Suppose that isn’t enough for you to put pothole repairs on your must-do list, think about the environment. As drivers are continually reducing their speed to minimize the possible impact from those potholes, they are getting less fuel efficiency and increasing the carbon monoxide we’re all breathing in.
Why are potholes dangerous?
All the things we listed above are what make potholes dangerous in addition to the damage to cars, the risk of injury to pedestrians, and the loss of potential customers for your business or your tenant’s business. Not least, just as important, the danger of more carbon monoxide in the air should be of concern to you and your tenants.
Are your tenants not renewing their leases? Or maybe you have potential tenants looking at rental space and decide to go elsewhere. Have you surveyed them and asked why? Invest some money and time into pothole repairs, and you’ll see an increase in renewed leases and new leases, and those businesses will see an increase in business. Pothole repairs are a win all the way around!
How do you fix potholes?
We can’t stress enough how essential pothole repairs are and to get them done as soon as you see a pothole. When they are left untreated, a pothole will continue to get more extensive, and the surrounding pavement begins to fail.
However, it is understandable if there isn’t room in the budget to hire a professional service for your pothole repairs. So, we offer the following method:
Cold-patch pothole repairs are a common material for DIY pothole repairs. Easy to use a product that is durable, economical, and provides lasting repair results.
- Step One: Clean around and inside the pothole, removing large debris and rocks.
- Step Two: Pour the cold-patch material into the pothole and spread it out so that it is half an inch above the surface. That half-inch will give you enough material to compact down in the pothole.
- Step Three: Pact the material down with a hand tamper until you have a level compacted surface.
What is the difference between a sinkhole and a pothole?
A sinkhole is a closed natural depression on the surface that is caused by the removal of material just below the ground. It either collapses or a gradual sinking of the ground surface results in a void. A pothole starts as a relatively small failure of the paving materials. They are more common in parts of the country where the weather experienced more ice and snow, but they are found anywhere in this country.
When it comes to potholes or speed bumps, which is worse on the vehicles? At the end of the day, they both can do a lot of damage to the inattentive driver. We have discussed the damage to a vehicle that can be caused by potholes, and maybe surprisingly, a speed bump can do the same damage.
Why is this surprising? Because speed bumps are installed as a safety measure! Yet, people will still drive over them just as fast as they would without the speed bump there. When it comes to which is going to be the winner, speed bumps and potholes vs wheels of the vehicles, the speed bump and potholes will win. Need a pothole filled? Call 254-716-8685 today.