How to walk a lot before you price it: measure, photograph, ask

The property manager meets you at the entrance at 7:30, coffee in hand, and says the lot needs "a new top." You have 25 minutes before they go inside. What you write down in those 25 minutes decides whether the proposal is a mill and fill, an overlay or a rebuild, and whether the change order in June is a two-line conversation or a fight.

To walk a lot before you price it, measure the net area you'll actually work, find out what's under the surface, check where the water goes, and photograph everything a customer might later say you should have seen. Then ask the questions only the customer can answer: when the lot can close, who signs, and what they're really trying to fix.

Here's the walk in the order it goes.

Before you drive out

Pull the address up on a satellite view the night before. Rough out the paved area, count the stalls and islands, and look for the obvious: a loading dock, a drive-through lane, a dumpster pad, trees hanging over the edge. You'll show up with a working number and a list of things to confirm, instead of starting cold.

On the phone, ask two things. What made them call now? And is anyone else pricing it? "Water is standing by the front door" is a different job from "the owner wants it to look sharp before a tenant moves in." Neither answer changes how you measure, but both change what you look at hardest.

Measure what you'll actually pave

Walk the perimeter with the wheel and break the lot into rectangles and triangles. Write each shape down separately with its dimensions, not just a total, so you can check the math at the kitchen table.

Say the lot is an L. The main field is 240 by 120 feet, which is 28,800 square feet. The drive lane along the building is 80 by 60, another 4,800. That's 33,600 square feet gross. Take out two islands at 60 by 10 (1,200 square feet together) and a 20 by 30 concrete dumpster pad (600). The net area is 31,800 square feet, and the net is what you price.

While the wheel is out, get the numbers the area doesn't give you:

• Linear feet of curb line, butt joints at the street and at concrete, and any edge that gets milled to tie in.
• Counts of manholes, valve boxes and catch basins, and whether each one sits high, low or right.
• Stalls, rows, arrows and accessible spaces, if striping is anywhere near this job.
• Crack footage in the sections that are cracked but not failed.

If the satellite number and the wheel number disagree by more than a little, trust the wheel and figure out why. Usually it's a shape you drew over a sidewalk or a lane that got widened after the photo.

Find out what's under the surface

The satellite view shows you the top of the mat. The price lives underneath it.

Walk every area with alligator cracking, ruts or potholes and press on it. Push a probe or a long screwdriver into the edges of the worst spots. Firm stone under broken asphalt is a patch. Wet, pumping, soft material is base failure, and base failure comes back through any new lift you put over it.

Measure each failed area and paint its outline. Say you find three: 10 by 12 near the entrance, 8 by 15 at the dumpster, 6 by 20 along the drive lane. Each one is 120 square feet, so 360 square feet in all. If those need 8 inches taken out and replaced with stone, that's 360 × 8 ÷ 12 = 240 cubic feet, or about 8.9 cubic yards of dig-out, before you've touched the rest of the lot. That's a line on the proposal, not a surprise in June.

Look at the dumpster pad approach and the lane the garbage truck uses. Heavy trucks turning in the same spot every week fail the base there before they fail it anywhere else.

Check the grade and follow the water

Grade is where an overlay turns into a mill and fill.

Stand at every door, every sidewalk edge and every gutter. If the lot is already level with the gutter lip, a 2-inch overlay puts water on the wrong side of it. If a door threshold sits an inch above the asphalt, you have an inch of room. Write down each spot where the grade can't come up, and measure the linear feet you'd have to mill to tie in.

Then find where the water goes. Birdbaths show up as dirt rings and stained low spots on a dry day. Catch basins with a rim above the asphalt around them hold water instead of taking it. If you can come back after a rain, do it, because an hour after a storm the lot tells you exactly where it's low.

Check access for the trucks and the paver

A tri-axle has to get in, back up to the paver and get out. Walk the entrance and look up as well as down: wires, tree limbs and canopies. Figure out where the lowboy unloads, where the trucks stage, and whether a sweeper and a roller fit past the cars that will still be parked on the day.

Note the things that set your day: a drive-through that can't close, a bank's armored truck schedule, a school bus loop, trash pickup days, and the sprinkler heads that will soak fresh sealcoat at 4 a.m.

Take the photos that settle arguments

Photos cost nothing on the lot and save you money at the end of the job. Take these:

• A wide shot from each corner, so anyone can see the whole lot later.
• Every failed area, with the wheel or a tape in the frame for scale.
• Every structure, curb problem and grade problem you wrote down.
• The existing striping layout, before anybody seals over it.
• Damage that's already there: broken curb, cracked sidewalk, a scraped bollard.

That last one matters. When the tenant says your roller cracked the sidewalk, a dated photo of the crack from the walk ends the conversation.

Ask the questions only the customer can answer

Before the property manager goes inside, ask:

• When can the lot close, and can it close all at once? Doing it in two halves means moving in twice and more joints. Price it that way if that's the answer.
• Who signs the proposal, and who pays? A property manager, an owner and a management company can be three different people.
• Are there tenant rules? Hours, noise, deliveries and who gets notified about towing.
• Is there a budget, or a phase plan? Sometimes the right answer is the entrance and the drive lanes this year and the back row next year.
• Any complaints you should know about? Trip hazards, a drain that backs up, a spot where someone fell.

Write the answers down in the same notes as your measurements. Next week, when you're writing the proposal at 9 p.m., you won't remember which lot had the drive-through.

Before you leave the lot

Sit in the truck for five minutes and read your notes back. Do you know the net area, the depth, the failed areas with their sizes, the linear feet of tie-ins and curb, the structure count and the access? Do you know what kind of job this is? If any of those is a guess, get out and measure it now. Coming back costs another trip, and pricing it as a guess costs more.

Then decide what you're selling while the lot's still in front of you. For the arithmetic that turns those notes into tons, trucks and a price, see how to estimate asphalt paving. If the grade is the deciding factor, the mill and fill glossary entry covers what milling adds to the price.

Questions contractors ask

How long should a lot walk take?
Long enough to measure every shape, probe every failed area and photograph the lot from each corner. On a small commercial lot that's often under an hour. A big lot or a complicated one deserves more, because the walk is cheaper than a wrong price.

Can I price from the satellite view without walking the lot?
You can price a lot from the office when you know its condition, like a sealcoat customer you've done before. For paving, walk it. Base failure, grade problems at the doors and a low catch basin don't show on a photo from above.

What should go on the proposal from the walk?
The net area, the lift thickness, the milling depth if any, the failed areas as their own line with a unit price for anything deeper than you found, and exclusions for what you saw and aren't fixing. The article on pricing commercial paving jobs goes through the proposal side.

Should I charge for a site visit?
Some contractors charge for walks on residential calls or far-away lots, and credit it back if the customer signs. It's your call. Either way, write it down before you drive out so it isn't a surprise.

Where Pavr fits

Pavr is job management software for paving, sealcoating, striping and concrete contractors. Draw the lot on the satellite view the night before, and the square feet, the curb line and the stall count are on the estimate before you walk it. When the wheel says something different, type in what the wheel says. See how measuring the lot works.