How to reduce maintenance costs for your business’s parking lot | Not all design jobs are fun. No construction designer spends their whole career designing things like the Burj Khalifa. Some will have the fascinating job of designing parking lots and other everyday facilities.
So whether you’re a designer creating a new parking lot, or a facilities manager for a business, finding ways to make the space neat, tidy, safe, and easy to maintain is key.
Nobody wants to be forking out thousands to replace walls or scrubbing for hours to remove graffiti. This is why there are four ways to reduce the headache of parking lot maintenance for you and its users.
Anti-corrosive wall coating
With fuel and adverse weather to withstand, parking lots are exposed to plenty of carbon dioxide and other chemicals. All of this can create carbonic acid that’s perfect for corroding concrete and metal infrastructure.
For protection, surfaces could be coated with an anti-corrosive product to prevent carbonic acid-forming and eliminate the damage it can have.
Block seals
When constructing multi-story car parks, blocks of concrete are used with gaps where two blocks join. These gaps are there to provide an escape for water and debris that falls into the parking lot so as to prevent accidents – both for people and their vehicles.
However, heavy traffic over these gaps can cause hairline cracks to emerge in the concrete, which can eventually wear into more severe damage.
Using waterproof expansion joint block seals to slot into the gaps can create a smoother ride for cars while also protecting the concrete underneath. These seals still allow water to pass through – making them the ideal option for open-top car parks.
Rubber crash rails and wall guards
Let’s face it; nobody is a perfect driver. Reversing a little too far, a parallel park that has gone wrong, or a close encounter with another person trying to find the parking lot’s exit happens to everyone. But that doesn’t mean the parking lot should feel the effects. Corners and columns are extremely vulnerable in car parks. You should try to protect these areas – and the rest of the structure – by using rubber crash rails and metal corner guards. These shock-absorbing devices can help to prevent damage being caused to both the car and the building – meaning everyone is generally happier.
A lot of parking lots are fitted with steel barriers; however, these can still damage vehicles and can be quite costly. On the other hand, rubber can be fixed onto just about any surface and created in a color that suits your aesthetic (or in a color that screams ‘there is a wall here!’ to drivers…).
Anti-graffiti paint
One thing that businesses can struggle to control is the damage that occurs when everyone goes home.
Graffiti can quickly make a parking lot feel tatty and unsafe. However, fighting against graffiti with hours of scrubbing and cleaning is a continuous battle. Instead, you need to prevent the issue rather than solve it retrospectively.
Graffiti is difficult to remove from concrete, and standard brick walls as the paint penetrates into the material. Using a resistant paint to create a tile-like surface can deter midnight artists from making their mark and reduce the damage it causes. These paints also make it much easier to remove graffiti if it does occur.
