Driveway sealcoating in Lake Forest.

What the work involves

Sealcoating a driveway means cleaning the surface, treating what needs treating, sealing the cracks, and rolling OverKote sealer over the top. It is the coating that takes the sun and the plow wear instead of your asphalt taking it.

Why it matters at this elevation

The point of sealing at this elevation is water. Every drop that soaks into asphalt is a candidate for freezing, and frozen water expands and breaks pavement from the inside. Sealer keeps most of that water on the surface where it can drain away, and it takes the plow and sun wear that would otherwise land on the asphalt itself.

Pavement in this range spends a long stretch under snow and then a long stretch cycling between melt and overnight refreeze. The refreeze does the damage. Water that ran into a crack at two in the afternoon is ice by nine at night, and ice takes up more room than the water did.

How the job runs

The order of operations is what makes it last. The surface gets cleaned down to sound pavement, oil spots get treated so the sealer will bond over them, cracks get sealed first, and then the coating goes on. Skipping prep is how a sealcoat ends up peeling inside a year.

Lake Forest pavement specifically

A mix of residential drives, small commercial lots, and marina access pavement. Mixed-use stretches like this often combine a striping job and a driveway on the same visit.

Lake Forest sits just east of Tahoe City on the way toward Dollar Point, a residential and light commercial stretch along the lake road with marina and campground pavement mixed in. Being close to Tahoe City means this pavement sees more traffic than a purely residential pocket would, and the commercial frontage here works through the whole summer season.

A coating on this pavement is protection against sun and water, not a repair. Where the surface has gone past protection, we say so rather than paint over it.

Lake Forest sits at roughly 6,250 feet, and the pavement around it behaves accordingly. More on the area on our Lake Forest service area page. We work the same corridor through Tahoe City, Dollar Point, Tahoe Park, Carnelian Bay, and the pavement guides go deeper on the physics if you want it.

Questions