For older homeowners, a significant concern is maintaining both style and functionality. Ideally, you don’t want to have to renovate your home soon after it has just been renovated. Having a tarmac patio, for instance, provides a durable and low-maintenance option for the home.
Tarmac driveways are also popular for this same reason. This is because their maintenance requirements are often less than those of other options. Whether it’s a tarmac driveway or a tarmac patio, tarmac makes for an effective material in home renovation.
Within this blog, we’ll be discussing why tarmac is well-suited for home renovation.
What is Tarmac?
Tarmac is a combination of tar and crushed stone mixed with sand. It makes for a strong, flexible material that can be formed into durable surfaces. Perfect for landscaping, it’s also good in cases where you don’t want the ground to be as hard as a concrete or a block paving surface.
If you want to learn about alternative materials suitable for your driveway, aside from a tarmac driveway, you can check out our previous blog on which home driveways are best.
Why Have a Tarmac Patio or Driveway?
There are several reasons to have a tarmac patio or a tarmac driveway. For most cases, the benefits are the same, so we will focus on the tarmac itself.
Cost Effective
Tarmac is great in part because it’s affordable. For a tarmac patio, you can expect to pay around £50-90 per square metre, with an average cost of around £2,000 for a good-sized patio. Compared to block paving, which can cost up to £125 per square metre depending on the type of block paving used, it’s a significant price saving.
When it comes to repairing a tarmac patio or driveway, the cost can be similarly affordable. Meaning that future maintenance is also low-cost. This is because you can just cut out the damaged section and fill it in with fresh tarmac. Avoiding the need to completely replace your tarmac driveway when you’re carrying out driveway maintenance.
Maintenance is Simple and Low Cost
As mentioned, compared to concrete, a tarmac patio or driveway can be repaired for a reasonable price. Since the material is poured, it only takes cutting out the damaged section to make room for more tarmac. Saving the cost of replacing a much larger space.
This is even simple enough that a homeowner could do it by themselves. Saving on the cost of hiring out a tradesperson just to carry out a small repair. That said, any larger landscaping effort should be done by a trusted expert. You wouldn’t want your new tarmac driveway or tarmac patio to have bubbles or other ugly lumps.
Durability
Tarmac driveways are renowned for their durability. With the flexibility of tarmac itself, the material can withstand a significant amount of weight and activity on top of it. So driving on and off it each day isn’t a problem. The same with a tarmac patio. You can host a dozen parties a year in your garden and not have to worry about the wear on your tarmac patio.
This also means that less driveway maintenance and maintenance in general is needed to take care of your tarmac surfaces. Since they don’t suffer cracks the way concrete does, or become easily eroded.
If you’re concerned about the winter period and the survival of your driveway, we previously wrote about driveway restoration and maintenance for winter here if you need more information.
Longevity
While tarmac is durable, it is also long-lasting. We can attest to this directly. Any of the tarmac driveways we’ve put in, or a tarmac patio, are still in good condition after years of use. With a little driveway maintenance, cleaning and removing debris, these surfaces can last for well over a decade.
Unlike block paving, which often requires more frequent repairs, tarmac surfaces require less maintenance and won’t need to be replaced as often. Saving homeowners potentially thousands.
Tips for Tarmac Patio and Driveway Maintenance
Having reviewed the benefits of tarmac, we will now close by discussing techniques to help keep your tarmac surfaces in good condition. That way, you can reduce tarmac patio and driveway maintenance. This allows you to spend more time on what you love instead.
Sweep and wash twice a month – Ensuring that debris is cleared is one of the best ways to prevent weeds from growing. It also reduces wear caused by friction, as granular debris can cause erosion over time.
Clear weeds – Remove any sprouts you find growing and apply preventive sprays where possible. This is an important part of driveway maintenance to prevent weeds from growing, which could cause fractures or splits in the surface.
Remove ice buildup and water – The occasional brush during a wet period is a good way to keep your tarmac driveway or tarmac patio healthy. Since water can freeze into micro-gaps in the surface if not cleared, this prevents the expanding ice from breaking the tarmac.
Fill splits quickly – Ensure that any splits or gaps are filled in with an approved gap-filling solution. This is one of the most important steps, as any hole in a tarmac patio or driveway could spread and further erode if left untreated.
Looking to Have Your Own Tarmac Patio or Tarmac Driveway?
As a professional installer of tarmac driveways and patios, we can help!
Our landscaping services cover driveways, block paving, tarmac, patios and driveway restoration.
If you need our assistance, please contact us through our contact page, by phone at 01925 394 813, or via email at jack.lowther@warringtondrivewaysandlandscapes.com.
We make your home renovation dreams come true!
