Parking Lot Maintenance is a yearly responsibility that many property managers and owners face. Year after year, they have their asphalt repair done such as their potholes filled, parking lots sealed, and their lines repainted because they know its important to keep their image of their parking lots up to par. However, parking lot maintenance requires much more then that. One key reason to keep your parking lot maintenance up to date annually is to increase the life span of your asphalt. After all, asphalt is one of the biggest investments a property owner faces over the years. When asphalt is first placed, it contains a lot of oil and this helps the asphalt to stay flexible. You should definitely get new asphalt seal-coated within six months of installation. This helps with the oils not being allowed to dry out to quick which can cause the asphalt to become brittle and crack. When seal coating asphalt, you should always try to apply 2 coats of seal coat on your parking lot  and do this process every two years. This maintenance can greatly increase the lifespan of your asphalt to up to 30 years depending on your local weather and driving conditions. At a bear minimum, we recommend 1 coat of seal once a year preferably done in the summer when the weather is above 75 degrees. If this basic asphalt maintenance schedule is adhered to, your problems with your parking lot repairs will be greatly reduced. If your parking lot maintenance is fallen behind over the years and your parking lot has gotten to a point where you need more then just annual maintenance, we recommend that you remove and replace the old asphalt with new asphalt. This can be expensive, so you may want to consider dividing your parking lot in to sections and repairing the sections one at a time starting from one side of your lot working towards the opposite side. This will allow you to tackle the project as your budget allows and will help the contractor to maintain a certain level of structural integrity. If you try to repair the parking lot from different sides, you can end up with high areas in your parking lot, and poor water drainage problems. An experienced asphalt contractor can and should be able to maintain proper elevations from where ever they start.  If done incorrectly, this can create draining issue for your parking lot down the road.  So if you are starting to look at your parking lot maintenance budget for the next few years, try to keep enough in it to at least get the basic asphalt repair such as seal and stripe. Then if you have funds left over from there, consider doing some pothole repairs or even driveway repairs. Remember that Asphalt Maintenance is the key to longevity of your asphalt parking lot.

Last week Trueline Striping was hired to place some new handicaps on a large parking lot of a church in Los Angeles. This is a typical parking lot striping job that we preform in Southern California for parking lot managers and parking lot owners every day.

Other services we offer include:

• Seal Coating
• Asphalt Patching
• Pressure Washing
• Warehouse Striping
• Sandblasting
• Traffic sign and pole installations
• Truncated domes
• plus many more.

If you have an upcoming parking lot striping or parking lot maintenance project coming up soon and would like up to provide you with a bid for no charge, please feel free to give us a call.

The service goes by many names such as Warehouse Floor Striping, Warehouse Floor Painting, Floor Painting, Warehouse Line Striping, plus many more. Its similar to painting parking lots in that you are basically measuring out lines and painting them down.  However, the similarities end there.  Warehouse Striping is a far more complex project to undertake then parking lot striping with factors to consider such as, product choices, product pot life, timing, drying times, product compatibility, and many many more.

There are a lot of contractors that will take these projects on with little to no experience or worse, they are unlicensed or un-insured. A good indicator of an unlicensed contractor is not seeing it posted on there web site or stationary. Many times, contractors will actually use another companies’ license. The easiest way to know who it belongs to is to do a search on your local state license board. In California, ours is at http://www2.cslb.ca.gov/OnlineServices/CheckLicense/LicenseRequest.asp . You can check a license by company name, personal name ( i.e. owners name) or by contractor license number that they provide. Insurance is even easier. Simply ask for proof of insurance and then call their provider to make sure their policy is current and reflects coverage for their company.

Here are a few other State License Board Search web addresses.

• Nevada           https://www.nvcontractorsboard.com/datamart/nvscbSearchType.do
• Florida            https://www.myfloridalicense.com/wl11.asp?mode=0&SID=
• New York       http://www.op.nysed.gov/opsearches.htm
• Washington   http://www.dol.wa.gov/business/checkstatus.html

Basically, if you need to do a search for a license, just paste the following line into your search engine and you should find your local agency.

Search Query:

(” state name” + “state license board”)

So. California would look like this:

(California State License Board)

Also, there are some states that do not have a state license board because they do not require a license to preform work.  At last, look the number was around thirteen. However, its changing a lot, so keep checking.

If you need a licensed contractor for your Warehouse Striping project, please give us a call. Not only are we licensed and insured, but we have 18 years of experience and  great customer service.

If your a property owner or manager, you may want to consider getting your curbs painted. After all, this is a fairly inexpensive way to add a ton of curb appeal to your property. Many of our customers use curb painting to add some last minute appeal to their properties before a big event starts or visiting executives come into town. Whether you plan on doing this in house or hiring a professional, consider these basic do’ s or don’ts for curb painting.

Do’ s  & Don’t s of Curb Striping

Do: Always prep your curbs before painting. If they look pretty good with little to no flaking, then go ahead and just hose them off with a garden hose or pressure washer. At the bare minimum, take a broom and sweep them well. This helps insure the bond between the paint and the curb. If the curbs are showing medium to heavy wear then consider scraping those areas till no more paint flakes off. If the paint continues to come off during the scraping process then you may want to have them sandblasted. When paint is already flaking from curbs and you add a coat of fresh paint to them the drying process often causes the old paint to peel and flake even more.

Don’t: Use the wrong paint over existing paint. Always be aware of what paint was used on the curbs before. Curbs should always be painted in a water based product. The reasons for this are based on two factors. First, is when you use an oil base paint, future striping contractors are more than likely to use the water based paint. Once water based paint goes over oil base paint the chances of paint failure skyrocket. When in doubt, do a small test area.

Do: Consider using high end paints on curbs, however be aware of the increased cost, increased dry times and increased technicalities.

Don’t: Forget when considering a enamel based paint for curbs that these paints are slippery when dry and even more so when wet. If you do consider a enamel based paint then you should consider a non skid additive thrown on the top part of the curb for a non skid finish. Though this process can be expensive, the cost involved doesn’t come close to comparing to the cost of a lawsuit. Trust me on this as I’ve served as an expert witness on several cases of curb painting related slip and falls, and it rarely ends well for the property owner/ manager.

Do: Use signs, barricades, string and ribbon on EVERY FOOT of freshly painted curb at your facility. This is the one I can’t recommend enough. Don’t count on common sense because often it is not there. In the last twenty years of working in this industry, I have seen at least a hundred times where people will walk up to you and ask “hey what ya doing?” then proceed to walk through your wet paint never being aware of what they just did. Its not that they are completely clueless as much as the information doesn’t process fast enough to stop them. Some are completely clueless.

Don’t: Be afraid to warn people about a wet paint even if you feel that they are aware. People don’t mind the reminder, just don’t be rude about it. Saying something like ” Sir, this red paint is still wet so please be careful near it” should be enough to get across the message. In California with our diverse population, we have learned to say Wet paint in 15 different languages . Just kidding!  However, visual cues can help when there is a language barrier. Like pointing to the sign or fresh curb painting.

Do: Call a professional if your having any reservations about painting your own curbs.

Don’t: Be afraid to try painting curbs if you feel it will save you some money or just like having the control of the project in house. Consult with a paint rep and take proper cautions around the general public.

If you have any curb painting projects that you need a proposal for or any questions that you need answered, please feel free to contact us here.

The most important question you should ask first is this: 

Is your warehouse floor striping company  a licensed contractor? and are they an experienced contractor?

That is an important question. Mainly because if your contractor is not licensed locally, and something goes wrong, it can be difficult to make that company responsible for their mistakes. Here is a quick story about a Warehouse Floor Striping Services contractor that cost their customer a lot of money.

In this story, a warehouse manager decided to hire a contractor from out of state in an effort to save money. Since labor can be cheaper and insurance and so on , some people will consider this a valid option despite the many laws that a broken along the way. This particular warehouse hired a contractor from a state out side of their own,  and agreed upon a price sight unseen. A contract was drafted and the contractor was paid half up front. The next week the project was started and finished 7 days later. These are a few of the photos that we took of the job to show you what they ended up with.

after the project got under way the warehouse manager realized the quality was not what he had expected. They could  have avoided a lot of problems by asking some basic questions up front. This is not to say that out of state  striping companies cannot do a quality job, but they should have referrals available, they should not be willing to bypass the laws regarding licensing and product use, and most importantly they should have the experience. When Trueline Striping is considering a out of state project, we do the research ahead of time for our accounts and give them a quick assessment of the cost, products, and a time frame.

If you have a Warehouse Floor Striping project coming up, give us a call and talk to one of our estimators. They can provide answers for all your questions.

Its January again and you know what that means! New budgets.

With facility maintenance budgets being strapped these days, one sure way to get a lot of curb appeal for not a lot of money is parking lot line painting. It can be done quickly and with rapid dry paints, there is very little down time for your lot. In many cases, we will repaint a wall mart parking lot or section of a mall and have it dry before the mall even opens. Also, we can work at night and have no affect on your customers at all.

Line Painting can help brighten up your lines, arrows, stops and stencils. Or if you need more maintenance, we can help with that as well. We have a variety of services and maintenance programs to help you decide.

If you have a parking lot and would like to know what its going to cost to get it repainted, call us today! 800-603-1116, we have estimators who can get you a quick quote today.