Questions to ask before booking a sealcoater

Whether two sealcoating quotes describe the same job depends on the coat count. Zusashi Maintenance lists $0.20 to $0.40 per square foot for a two-coat application. Action Paving, which trades as Asphalt Sealing, publishes a commercial price on its sealing page but does not state how many coats are included. This index contains 96 sealcoating companies and no email address on any record.

Two GTA contractors publish commercial sealcoating prices, and only one of them says what the price covers. Zusashi Maintenance, which has served Mississauga and the GTA since 2007, charges $0.20 to $0.40 per square foot and states that its sealcoating involves two coats. Action Paving, which trades as Asphalt Sealing, prices commercial lot sealing per square foot on its own page, and that page says nothing about the number of coats. A single-coat job that carries the same per-square-foot price as a two-coat job costs more for the work actually provided.

A bid does not reveal this information unless it spells out the coat count. Sealer goes on wet and cures to a dark finish on every job, which means a one-coat lot and a two-coat lot are impossible to tell apart on the afternoon the crew leaves. Later, the difference emerges in how long the surface holds its colour and how early oxidation reappears. Because the per square foot amount does not include the coat count, the written scope is the only thing that can confirm it, and that is why the question is asked first. For the rates behind this, see the sealcoating cost guide.

The contractors on this site price and sell crack sealing as a separate service. Zusashi Maintenance charges $1 to $3 per linear foot for hot rubberized crack sealing, added to the per square foot sealcoat. When a lot has extensive cracking, the crack sealing charge can be as large as the sealcoat charge. Two bids that differ mostly in how much cracking each crew plans to seal can then seem to disagree about sealcoat price when they do not.

Small jobs follow a different rule. For a sealcoating job of roughly 750 square feet, Action Home Services, based in Toronto and Richmond Hill, sets a minimum project charge of $300, which works out to about $0.40 per square foot at that size. That minimum does not drop for a smaller area, so a small strip of pavement costs the same as a slightly larger one, and only by bundling the work into a bigger maintenance visit does the effective rate change. At the opposite end, Zusashi Maintenance's own worked example places a 10,000 square foot commercial lot at $2,000 to $4,000 in total for the two-coat application it describes, the same $0.20 to $0.40 per square foot band expressed as a project number.

Sealcoating is maintenance. The coating slows oxidation and keeps water, oil, and salt from reaching the asphalt beneath it. It does not fix structural failure or close a pothole. A quote that promises a sealcoat will repair an already crumbling surface is describing something the material cannot do.

Repair work involves a different level of cost. Zusashi Maintenance charges $100 to $500 per pothole repair on a commercial lot, depending on size and depth, and $2 to $5 per square foot for general commercial asphalt patching. Resurfacing costs more: The Paving Company, a Toronto and GTA contractor, lists its own asphalt overlay work at $3 to $7 per square foot, roughly ten to twenty times the sealcoat rate. Those price gaps are the argument for keeping a sound lot sealed, not the argument for sealing a failed one. These figures are in the asphalt repair cost guide and the asphalt resurfacing cost guide.

Ask how the sealer is applied, although none of the sources on this site quote a different rate for that. Integrity Asphalt, which serves Toronto and Mississauga, says it sprays sealer to cover large areas quickly and then uses a squeegee to work it into the surface texture. Both methods are common among commercial contractors in the GTA, and none of the Toronto and GTA sources behind this site lists a separate price for either one.

Since the price stays fixed, the answer works as job information rather than as a way to adjust the invoice. A crew that plans to spray a textured, weathered surface is making a different decision from one that plans to squeegee it, and asking which method is planned brings the reasoning out before the truck arrives, not after. Surface preparation should be part of the same discussion, because oil stains, debris and existing cracks all add labour before any sealer is applied, and that preparation is part of why quotes move across the $0.20 to $0.40 per square foot band Zusashi Maintenance publishes.

The City of Toronto requires any business that repaves residential or commercial driveways and lots to hold a Driveway Paving Contractor licence. To obtain that licence, a business must have commercial general liability insurance of at least $2,000,000. The application and licence together cost $495.12, and the annual renewal is $293.14. This requirement applies only to repaving and resurfacing work. If a sealcoating contractor also performs overlay or repaving services, the licence requirement applies to that part of the job.

Ontario's HST rate is 13%, as the province's own HST page states. For a 10,000 square foot lot priced at $2,000 to $4,000 in Zusashi Maintenance's own worked example, the difference between a quote that includes HST and one that excludes it is significant, and two bids that treat this differently cannot be compared until both indicate their treatment. The index itself does not record a licence status for any of the 376 companies listed, so that information comes from the contractor and the City, not from this site.

In this index, sealcoating ranks second among the categories by company count: 96 of the 376 companies carry it, behind asphalt paving at 181 and ahead of parking lot paving at 92. Because many records list more than one category, the totals for the nine categories add up to a number larger than the index total. They are listed on the category page at sealcoating.

The records are deliberately thin. Of the 376 companies, 352 have a rating, with an average of 4.46 and a median of 4.8 across those 352 rated companies, from 12,300 reviews in total. The median review count is 15, so half of the rated records depend on only a small number of reviews. Phone numbers appear on 358 records, and websites appear on 299. None of the records list an email address. Among the sealcoating records, named examples include No Limit Sealing Vaughan, in Vaughan with 5 across 521 reviews, the largest review count in the index; Hamilton Driveway Sealing at 4.9 across 182; Prime Source Quality Asphalt Sealing and Landscaping in Burlington at 5 across 180; Saga Sealing in Pickering at 5 across 148 with no website on record; SealStar Canada in Mississauga at 5 across 52; and EcoSeal Services in Islington-City Centre, Toronto, at 5 across 59. Those are the records as collected. The index contains no warranty terms, no completion history and no years in business for any of them, which leaves the coat count, the crack sealing scope and the tax treatment as the three items a buyer can settle in a single call.