Concrete driveway maintenance and sealing schedule

Concrete is low maintenance, and the little it needs is mostly cleaning. Sweep leaves and dirt off it when they collect, because wet leaves stain and trapped dirt holds moisture against the surface. Hose it down after mud, mulch or fertilizer gets on it. Oil, grease and rust are the stains that set if left, so treat them while they are fresh with a degreaser or a poultice made for concrete.

Once a year, usually in spring, give the whole drive a pressure wash at moderate pressure with a wide fan tip, held far enough back that it cleans without etching the surface. That is also the time to walk it and look at the joints, the edges and any crack that has changed since last year.

• Sweep and rinse as needed through the year
• Treat oil, rust and leaf stains while they are fresh
• Pressure wash and inspect each spring
• Keep mulch, soil and downspout discharge off the edges of the slab

Sealer keeps water, salt and stains out of the surface of the slab. A new driveway should wait for sealer until it has cured and dried, which is generally 28 days or more after the pour, weather permitting. After that, a penetrating sealer on a broom-finish drive lasts several years, while a film-forming sealer on stamped or colored concrete wears faster and is reapplied more often, generally every 2 to 3 years depending on sun, traffic and weather.

Morgan's goes over the sealer and the schedule for your finish, broom or stamped, on pour day. The test between scheduled sealings is simple: if water darkens and soaks into the surface within a minute rather than beading, the sealer is gone. Apply on a dry slab, in mild temperatures, with no rain in the forecast for a day, and keep cars off it until it has cured, which the sealer label states and the weather changes.

Winter is where most driveway damage happens. Water gets into the surface, freezes, expands and pops the top layer off, which is the flaking called scaling. Deicers make it worse by increasing the number of freeze and thaw cycles and, in the case of some products, attacking the cement paste directly. Rock salt is hard on concrete in its first winter and on any unsealed slab. Ammonium sulfate and ammonium nitrate, sold in some fertilizer-based deicers, eat concrete and should never go on a driveway.

• Keep every deicer off a driveway in its first winter
• Skip rock salt, ammonium sulfate and ammonium nitrate products entirely
• For traction, use sand, or a calcium magnesium acetate product sparingly
• Shovel with a plastic-edged shovel and keep metal blades and tire chains off the surface
• Go into winter with the slab sealed so water cannot get into the surface

Control joints are where the slab is designed to crack, and they need to stay open to do that. Keep them clear of dirt, grass and debris, which hold water and freeze. If the joints were sealed with a flexible sealant, check it each spring and recaulk where it has pulled away. A hairline crack that has appeared inside a joint is the joint doing its job and needs nothing.

Cracks elsewhere are worth watching. Measure the width and note it each spring. A crack that stays hairline for years is cosmetic and can be sealed to keep water out. A crack that widens, offsets so one side is higher than the other, or spreads into a pattern across a panel means the base is moving, and that is the point to get someone out to look.

Most driveways go years without needing anything beyond cleaning and sealing. Call for a look when a panel has sunk or heaved at a joint, when a crack has changed from one spring to the next, when scaling has gone past the surface and exposed the aggregate over a large area, or when water pools on the slab or runs toward the garage. Morgan's replaces driveways and cuts out and replaces failed sections, and Joe can tell you on a site walk whether the slab needs attention now or can wait. The resurface or replace article linked below walks through what he looks for.