Driveways
Can a driveway be coated?
Sometimes, because a driveway takes vehicle weight, plow blades, road salt and a deeper freeze and thaw swing than any other slab you own.
The short version
- A driveway is a different specification from a garage floor. The same system does not simply move outside.
- Plow blades and shovels hit a driveway edge on, and nothing inside a garage does that.
- Road salt arrives on a driveway straight off the street, in whatever the plow truck laid down.
- The condition of the slab matters more here than on any other floor, so it gets read before anything is offered.
- On plenty of driveways a penetrating sealer is the better buy than a film, and it is worth hearing why.
What a driveway takes
Everything hard about an exterior floor lands on a driveway at once. Vehicle weight, and turning weight, which is worse. A plow blade or a shovel hitting it edge on all winter. Road salt off the street in whatever quantity the truck laid down. Sun on it from morning until night. And the deepest freeze and thaw swing of any slab on the property, because there is nothing heated under it.
A garage floor sees maybe half of that, and it sees it under a roof. So a system that has done well in garages around here is not automatically the system for the driveway in front of them, and anybody who offers you the same floor for both without walking the driveway has skipped the question that matters.
Reading the slab first
The concrete counts for more here than anywhere. A driveway that is already spalling, that has aggregate showing through the surface, or that has scaled from salt is telling you the top of the slab is coming apart, and anything bonded to a surface that is coming apart leaves with it. That gets repaired or it does not get coated.
Cracks count for more too, because a driveway crack moves with the ground under it through every season. A tight crack gets handled one way. A crack you can get a finger into, with the sides sitting at different heights, is a slab problem and somebody should call it that. So is a section that rocks under a tire.
When a sealer is the better buy
A film sits on top of the concrete. A penetrating sealer soaks in and works from inside the surface, so there is nothing on top to blister or get scraped off by a blade. On a lot of driveways in this part of the country that is the right recommendation, and it is a cheaper one.
Where a coated driveway does make sense is a sound slab, an owner who knows what a winter here does to it, and a system picked for outdoors and for traffic. Get somebody to stand on it in person and get the answer in writing either way, because on this floor more than any other it depends on what the slab is doing.