If your business has a parking lot, you need to keep it looking great. This is the first thing people see when they arrive at your business and they may judge you based on what they see. If it looks bad, they may keep driving and do their shopping elsewhere. You can always enlist the services of a parking lot cleaning services but there are also some things you can do to keep your lot looking great.
- When you clean the parking lot, get rid of everything. Whether you have a parking lot cleaning services come out and do the work yourself with sweeper trucks, you need to make sure you get all of the dirt, leaves, rocks and whatever other debris like twigs and branches have fallen onto your parking lot. This will make your parking lot more attractive to potential shoppers and clients and it will be safer. Doing this will also protect the pavement. When your parking lot is covered with debris, it makes it hard for water to drain from the area. Standing water on your cement can cause it to break down and start to soften. Potholes and cracks form more easily on pavement that has been weakened by this water damage.
- Keep your eye on your parking lot. When you pay good attention to the state of your parking lot, you can catch cracks and potholes when they are small and easy to fix. The surface of your parking lot is under constant attack by water and the elements. You will have to spend less on the maintenance of your parking lot if you pay close attention to it. When you fill in the cracks as you find them, you also prevent any vegetation from growing and keeps any water from sneaking in and doing further damage. If your business is in a colder climate and there is the chance that the water will freeze, you really risk having a lot more damage to your parking lot. Washington, DC parking lot sweeping experts say that fixing cracks before the winter months is a very good habit, it can make a big difference.
- Clean your parking lot of any oil. Whenever you have cars parked in a space and you have them coming and going, you are going to have some oil spill onto the pavement. Some of your customers will have cars with drippy engines, this is a fact of life. Not only is an oily parking lot less attractive and potentially dangerous for pedestrians, the oil can work on your pavement and break it down over time. You can use baking soda, soda (Coke or Pepsi) or some other items to clean the oil from your parking lot. If you have problems doing that on your own, you should call a parking lot cleaning services company to help. Keep in mind, the runoff from your parking lot can get into the local water supply so work with the parking lot cleaning services company to prevent that as well.
- Switch up your car and foot traffic patterns. From time to time, you should consider repainting your parking lot. When you do this, change the position of your parking spaces. This can change the traffic pattern for the vehicles and the people who walk through. In the same way that you need to rotate your tires to change the wear and tear pattern on them, when you change up the location of your parking spaces, you change the wear and tear pattern on your parking lot. This can help your pavement last longer.
- Seal your lot. You should have your parking lot sealed by a professional parking lot cleaning services company when you first have it put in but then you will need to have this redone. The frequency with which your lot needs to be sealed depends a lot on the region where you are located and other factors. Your parking lot cleaning services company can give you some guidance about this.
Your parking lot is a great perk for your customers. It can attract people but repel them if it is not kept up properly.