Reflectorized Striping | Why Property Managers & Property Owners Should Consider it.

Did you know that Empire Parking Lot Services is not just an asphalt repair company? We offer far more services than most Southern California paving contractors, including some of the newest and most innovative products for the parking lot and warehouse maintenance industry. Although we do offer all of the typical parking lot maintenance services, such as asphalt repair, concrete repair, and sealcoating, we also help our customers solve more unique problems such as this month’s featured “product spotlight” on reflectorized striping. Learn more below about the benefits of reflectorized striping, and why it’s not just being used on airports & freeways anymore.

About Reflectorized Striping

Since the 1940’s glass beads have been added to line striping on the freeways and roads across the United States. Originally it was added to the lines to help drivers navigate through the blackouts during WWII. But lately, more and more property owner and managers are using glass beads to help reduce the number of accidents that can occur in the parking lot.  The reason for using glass beads is simple, It makes parking lot markings, such as stop and bar stencils and painted center lines that divide traffic, show up much better at night. (see photo below). By adding glass beads to the parking lot striping, the paint reflects the drivers headlights back at them where ever the paint is beaded making it glow brightly and show up much better.

These glass beads make the striping stand out better and in return can greatly reduce the overall safety of your parking area. On the project above located at a mall in southern California you can see a side by side comparison of what the striping looks like with and without glass beads or reflectorizing. Many malls and busy shopping centers are looking for cost effective ways to reduce their exposure to costly litigation. Glass beads over fresh parking lot markings are a perfect fit for that. For just a little bit extra cost you get quite a bit of punch. Furthermore, glass beads really only need to go onto your crosswalks, stops and other critical markings that affect pedestrians in cars and on foot.

About Empire Parking Lot Services

Empire Parking Lot Services offers parking lot maintenance and warehouse maintenance services throughout Southern California. Our service areas include Los Angeles, Riverside, San Bernardino, & Orange County. We also offer services to parts of Ventura and San Diego. Our services include asphalt repair, concrete repair, sealcoating, parking lot striping, as well as very unique services such as glass beads or reflectorized striping, truncated domes, safety bollards, speed bump installations and many others. In addition to the parking lot repairs we do each day, Empire also offers warehouse repair services to concrete. These services include striping lines in epoxy paint, acid resistant floor coatings, sign hanging services, and shotblasting, plus many others. Call us today if you have a project that you need help on. We would love to add you to our list of happy customers.

Call us Toll Free: (877) 760-2757

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Reflectorized Striping | Product Spot Light

Empire-PLS Performs Seal & Stripe for Placentia Business

Sealcoating & Striping in Placentia Ca.

This week Empire-PLS performed some Seal & Striping for a local Placentia California business called Lincoln Imports.  They are an importer that has been in business for over 31 years. Lincoln Imports is an importer of seasonal items and home décor items. When they called us they were in the process of getting multiple quotes for seal & striping and crack filling services. Empire-PLS provided them with a quote and we were awarded the project based on both price, and presentation. They basically said that they felt more at ease with us and that is some great feedback.

Seal & Striping Makes Asphalt Last Longer

One of things savvy property owners such as Lincoln Imports understands is that if you don’t take care of your parking lot with annual maintenance, it will cost you much more over time. Annual or semiannual maintenance is the key to keeping your asphalt intact and lasting much longer.

At Empire-PLS, we strictly adhere to what the experts recommend, and those experts are the manufacturers of the sealcoat materials we use.  We work with several major manufacturers including Diversified, Western Emulsions, & Western Colloid.  These companies recommend that sealcoating is done about every three to four years, but also recommend that at that time length, you install (2) coats of seal and not just one.

Many California businesses opt for sealing their parking lots every 2 years with a (1) single coat to spread out the cost of maintenance, as well as keep their parking lot looking blacker for longer.  Some parking lots however will require sealcoating and striping more often that based on their own particular reasons.

For Lincoln Imports it had been about three years and was defiantly time for the new Seal & Striping.  Sealcoating helps protect your asphalt by sealing the asphalt pavement, thus preventing much of oxidation and erosion of the top layers of your asphalt. On older asphalt pavements, seal coating helps by replacing many of the fine particles that get lost from the top of the asphalt surface due to the oxidation process that naturally occurs.

Here are Some Other Benefits you get From Sealcoating:

• Sealcoating seals the smaller hairline cracks that can eventually turn into larger cracks. Sealing these helps to reduce water from seeping down to the base material and doing damage.
• Sealcoating also helps protects the asphalt from the sun, as well as the harmful effects of chemical spills such as oil, gasoline, and other petroleum products.
• Sealcoating allows your parking lot to have a deep dark color allowing your parking lot markings to stand out more.
• Sealcoating leaves a smooth, clean surface ideal for sweeping, potentially lowering cleaning costs.
• Sealcoating costs pennies a square foot compared to the dollars needed to repair or replace damaged asphalt.

For more information about sealcoating check out this website here, it is the Asphalt Sealcoating Manufacturers Association and has lots of information about sealcoating materials as well as what it means when your sealcoating goes bad.

About Empire Parking Lot Services

Empire Parking Lot Services is a company with just one goal. Our goal is simple in that we want every customer we work with to be 100 % satisfied with our asphalt maintenance services. We believe by meeting this goal, all other goals will happen naturally.  Please keep Empire Parking Lot Services in mind for your next Seal & Striping project, and put our words to the test. Have confidence that in that last few years thousands of our customers have used our seal and striping services without regrets or complaints.  Empire-PLS is located in the Southern California area and services the entire southland area. Please call us toll free with any questions or project that you may have.

Empire Parking Lot Service 877-760-2757

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Seal & Striping for Placentia Local Business

Parking Lot Striping for Santa Ana Westfield Mall

This week Empire Parking Lot Services performed the re-striping of all lines, handicap spaces, stencils, and much more at the Westfield Mall located in Santa Ana, California. If you’re not familiar with the Westfield Mall, it’s located in the heart of Orange County. A Westfield Mall property manager had called us in regards to their parking lot striping needs. They let us know up front that there were a lot of bidders on this project. It was a pretty good size project as far as line striping jobs go, so armed with that information our estimator set out to give them the best price possible, while not sacrificing any quality on the actual striping work. After performing a thorough take off and compiling the numbers we submitted our price the next day and hoped for the best. A few days later our estimator got the phone call. We were informed that out of five bidders, we were still in the running with two other companies. They asked us if we would be willing to match the lowest bid, and said that they felt the most comfortable with us, however the price needed to be the same as the lowest bidder. Typically we won’t just match a low bid to get a job.  But, our estimator said that the job was a clean project on a well maintained property, and the relationship was solid with his customer. Also, we can’t have a parking lot maintenance project in our own back yard (Santa Ana) going to someone else now can we?

About this Parking Lot Striping Project

As mentioned above, this was a parking lot striping project. What the mall needed was a company that could come in at night and re-stripe what ended up being about 85% of the entire malls parking. The scope of project focused mainly on the ring road around the parking lot as well as several of the main parking lots and garages. Once the contract was awarded to us, we submitted a move diagram indicating where we would be on what nights, and what we had planned to get done on those moves. The mall management agreed with the plan, and the project was executed. All in all, the entire project took about 4 nights to complete and it turned out great.  When Empire Parking Lot Services takes on a parking lot striping project such as this one we bring a lot of pride in making sure the work looks good. Some of the extra steps that our company takes to provide a better service, is to pre-black out old stencil that will not match up with our Cal Tran’s spec stencils. Life would be some much easier if every parking lot striping painter used one stencil font! Another thing that we do different than many other line striping contractors is snapping lines. Even though this is a re-stripe we still snap base lines so that when we re-paint the lines they look straight. Often times this will even help hide mistakes other companies have made in the past. Lastly with Empire Parking lOt Services, we only use quality paint products. Many companies will use the cheapest price paint available that week. Empire Parking Lot Services uses only quality products that match the job type and as well as environment.

About Empire Parking Lot Services

Empire-PLS offers many different parking lot repair and maintenance services. These include asphalt repair, concrete repair, seal coating as well as parking lot striping. Furthermore, we offer a complete line of ADA upgrades including concrete sidewalk repair, truncated domes, signage and ADA striping all installed to precise ADA codes. Empire Parking Lot Services offers its parking lot maintenance expertise to the entire Southern California area. This area includes Orange County, Los Angeles, Riverside, San Bernardino, and parts of San Diego & Ventura. If you have a parking lot striping/ line stripping, line marking, line painting, or parking area marking project, that you could use our services on, feel free to give us a call toll free and set up an appointment with one of our estimators. We would love the opportunity to serve you today.

Call us Toll Free at 877-760-2757

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Westfield – MainPlace Shopping Mall Gets New Parking Lot Striping

Tesla Motors Gets New Truncated Domes at Newport Beach Dealership

For March Empire Parking Lot Services parking lot maintenance project of the month goes to the Tesla Newport dealership located in the city of Newport Beach, California.  Surrounded by the cities of Huntington Beach, Dana Point, & Irvine Ca, Tesla Motors is one of only 17 locations worldwide that sells the sleek and sexy Model S and the Roadster. What Tesla Newport needed done was some truncated domes and ADA striping that would help to bring the dealership up to code. Tesla Motors required the contractors bidding this project to use specific materials and products for the installation of the ADA items. Safety Step truncated domes where required and we where to color match the existing brick for painting out the old striping, so that new striping could be painted. Once Empire Parking Lot Services was awarded the contract for the project we started the wheels in motion.

About this ADA Parking Lot Maintenance Project

As stated above this parking lot maintenance project was mainly a ADA upgrade to existing parking lot features that were not compliant with the city of Newport Beach as well as Federal ADA codes. The features we needed to fix on this project were the installation of new truncated domes using the safety step system, as well as the removal of old parking lot striping and painting new striping that was compliant. Since Tesla runs a very clean dealership with a stylish look and design, standard yellow truncated domes would have clashed horribly. With the safety step system you have several colors to choose from (see chart below) Tesla chose the grey color and it came out very nice.

About Empire Parking Lot Services

Empire Parking Lot Services is one of Southern California’s fastest growing parking lot maintenance companies. The reason for this growth is because we focus on three main factors when it comes to our projects. First we do each and every project to the same standards we would expect on our own property. Our customers are guaranteed that the work is at or above the industry standards for whatever service we offer. From parking Lot striping to concrete repair the work will look good and last or we will fix it. We stand behind every project. Secondly we only install products and materials that will last, look good, and protect you down the road from future problems. Lastly we do all of this more competitively than any other contractor in the Southern California area. For the quality and price we can’t be beat. Empire–PLS offers its services the entire Southern California area. For more information about our parking lot maintenance services, or our company, just click any of the links above to take you to our website.

Call us today if you have any questions about truncated domes, parking lot striping or ADA upgrades.

Toll Free: 877-760-2757

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Project of the Month March 2011Tesla Motors Newport Beach Ca

Cathedral Catholic High School Trust Empire

About This Seal Coating & Striping Project

This week we worked in San Diego, Ca. performing some seal coating & striping at Cathedral Catholic High School. This school has a beautiful campus that is meticulously maintained. They trusted Empire Parking Lot Services to seal & stripe their campus, and they didn’t regret it. When we step on to your business, church or facility we treat your parking lot or facility like it was our own. This project was a good example of how much impact some sealcoat and striping can have on your parking lots curb appeal. The seal really makes the parking lot stand out and also offers the protection your asphalt needs from year to year against the sun, rain and water runoff from irrigation and vehicles.

The Seal & Stripe Project Breakdown

We arrived on site at 6 am sharp. We always arrive one hour early to clean our tools, pull loose weeds and clean parking lot before we start the actual seal coating process. We got all of that done and then started the seal coat process which lasted for about 4-5 hours. We used a machine to apply the sealcoat called a seal squeegee or seal buggy. This applies the seal coat smoother and more evenly and reduces the number of squeegee stroke patterns that will show up on the parking lot after it’s sealed. Once the seal coat dried, we moved onto the line striping portion of the job. Our striping crews showed up at about 4 pm and started the layout which included lines, handicaps, stencils and crosswalks. The work turned out great and the curbs where painted red as the final service we completed. Take a look at a few of the pictures from the project below.

About Empire Parking Lot Services

Empire-PLS is Southern California best seal coating and striping contractors . When it comes to speed bump construction, repair, or maintenance Empire is the best choice. We are located in Orange County and service the entire Southern California area including Los Angeles, San Bernardino, San Diego, Ventura, and Riverside.  Please call Empire today to discuss your project. Empire offers asphalt repair, concrete repair, seal coating, line painting and many other parking lot maintenance related services to Southern California. Empire can be reached toll free at 877-760-2757

or you can visit our main website at

www.empirepls.com.

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San Diego High School Gets New Sealcoating & Striping

New Line Striping at LA Parking Lot

All Quiet on the Set

This weekend in the garment district of Los Angeles, Empire Parking Lot Striping was contracted with a movie studio to do its tiny part in making a Hollywood movie.  Now, if you’re not familiar with the garment district in LA (also known as the LA Fashion District) it is an area in Los Angeles where many of the clothes that end up in stores today are created.

To quote the official LA Fashion District website:

“As the creative center of the fashion industry, the LA Fashion District is a top destination for wholesale buyers, retail shoppers, designers, fashion students and Hollywood stylists. Over one and a half million people from all around the world visit the District annually. And with the addition of residents, the Fashion District is now positioned to become a 24-hour destination.

Anyways back to the movie. Empire was contracted by a local production company to do a small but relevant part of preparing a set located in the garment district.  The scene apparently takes place in a small dingy parking lot in the gritty streets of LA.  Just kidding it’s actually a nice area I just got caught up in the whole movie biz lingo. Basically, what our customers needed was for us to correct some Parking Lot Striping that they had removed for a movie. From what I was told the lines where a distraction in the scene so they just remove them. Isn’t that cool? I can hear the director now.

“And action! …..Wait! No…NO…No… This scene is all wrong those lines in that parking lot, don’t look right! …..Remove them!!!”

About our Parking Lot Striping Project:

We showed up at 6 am before the parking lot opened for business.  Many parking lots in Los Angeles are actually paid for parking.  So a guy sits in the booth in the parking lot and collects money for people using their parking lots. Once there we blocked off the parking lots only entrance. Now we were able to get the Parking Lot Striping started.  We snapped our lines, repainted the parking lines and stencils, and the whole project took all of an hour to get done.  Of course that’s including drying time. This was an easy job and the project wasn’t exactly beautiful to look at but I hoped that some of that LA feel would come through in the photos.

About Empire Parking Lot Services

Empire Parking Lot Services is Southern California’s premier parking lot maintenance company.  Every day we help our management customers, contractors as well as our production managers with many of their parking lot maintenance needs including Parking Lot Striping.  Empire Parking Lot Services offers top notch parking lot repair and warehouse maintenance services to the entire Southern California area.  Our service area includes Orange County, Los Angeles, Riverside County, San Bernardino, San Diego as well as parts of Ventura.  Contact us today if you have any questions about any project you may have upcoming.  Empire Parking Lot Services is a fully licensed & fully bonded asphalt contracting company.

Call us at: 714-633-0300

Or look us up on the web at www.Empirepls.com

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LA parking Lot Gets New Line Striping

A Quick Guide To traffic Paint

The Basics Of Traffic Paint

All traffic paint contains a lot of pigment. Pigment is the colored solid material left on the pavement after the liquids have evaporated and/or been absorbed into the pavement. Contractors are usually surprised to learn that there is a frequently wide range in the percentage of pigment used by different parking lot striping paint  manufacturers.

It’s also important to be aware that some manufacturers use different solvents in their paint. Therefore, some brands may not be chemically compatible with other brands of paint. Incompatible paints may not “mix” together if combine in the same pail. For example, Brand X alkyd striping paint may not combine with Brand Y or Brand Z alkyd striping paint. Wise contractors always ask their dealer for this type of information.

By comparing the net weights of similar types of paint made by various manufacturers, you’ll instantly see which paint offers the most “solids.” That will be the paint that weighs the most. Of course, the heavily pigmented paints are unlikely to be the cheapest.

Update: The Environment and Traffic Paint

These days environmental issues are at the top of many people and agency’s priority list. With that being said paints have continued to get restructured to be more friendly with the environment in mind. Parking Lot Striping traffic paint is no exception to this. Solids are being reduced and pigments are being reduced in order to comply with local air quality laws. There is a big push here in California to create environmentally friendly paints for parking lot and parking structure applications. These new paints can be hit and miss in terms of there coverage so the best advice on them is to have a good solid relationship with your paint rep and discuss the new products before you buy.

Best Traffic Paint Products and Dealers

We believe there is a wide range of criteria in selecting paint, other than price. Some important points to consider are list below:

• Workability; consistently and how well it flows with your equipment.
• Long life/good “wear” and color retention characteristics
• Professional expertise from your dealer; you need good advice from someone in your locality when you enter the striping business.
• Credit terms/delivery service; be sure to find a high quality paint supplier who can help you in many ways.

About Empire Parking Lot Services

Empire Parking Lot Services is a Southern California parking lot maintenance company that takes the paving / parking lot maintenance industry very seriously. We strive to constantly learn about new products and new technologies affecting our wide array of services including asphalt repair, concrete repair, sealcoating and parking lot striping. If you have a question or comment on this article feel free to leave it or contact us by clicking on any of the links in this blog.

www.Empirepls.com

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Understanding the Different Traffic Paint Options

Irvine Gets Some New Parking Lot Striping, Curb Painting & Sealcoating.

New Seal and Stripe for Irvine Shopping Center

The great thing about working in Irvine, California is that, when you show up to job sites there, it’s almost always cleaned, well designed, and done right the time before. For us this job was no exception.  Irvine is located in South Orange County between the cities of El Toro, Lake Forrest, Laguna Beach and Dana Point.  Our account called us out on this project because they needed some fast work done on one of their shopping centers. They required some Seal and Striping as well as some stenciling done on their parking lot.  We talked to them and figured out what they would need and scheduled the job for the next day.

Seal & Stripe

About Irvine Seal & Striping Project

Our customer’s project ended up being an easy one. All that they needed was to seal coat over old parking stalls and then re stripe the parking lot stalls to a new layout. One of our crews arrived at the job early in the day to ensure that the work areas where barricaded off. We cleaned off the area of parking that was affected and applied a heavy coat of seal to the area and let it dry. The next day we headed back out to the job to layout and paint all of the affected striping. Once the line striping was completed we painted down some motorcycle stencils on to the asphalt and broke down the barricades. When it comes to Seal and Striping no one does it better!

Seal / Stripe

About Empire Parking Lot Services

Empire Parking Lot Services is Southern California’s premier parking lot maintenance company.  Every day we help our management customers, contractors as well as our direct owners with many of their parking lot maintenance needs including Seal and Striping.  Empire Parking Lot Services offers top notch parking lot repair and warehouse maintenance services to the entire Southern California area.  Our service area includes Orange County, Los Angeles, Riverside County, San Bernardino, San Diego as well as parts of Ventura.  Contact us today if you have any questions about any project you may have upcoming.  Empire Parking Lot Services is a fully licensed & fully bonded asphalt contractor company.

Give us a call today

714-633-0300

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Parking Lot Striping In Irvine California

Acton Community HOA Gets New Signs & Stop Stencil Striping.

A quick note about Acton California

This week Empire Parking Lot Services had an opportunity to go to one of the most amazing parts of Southern California I never knew existed. Now like I said this is a place I have never had the pleasure of seeing before, it’s called Acton, California.  Acton, California is off the 14 freeway north of Los Angeles and just south of Palmdale.  Acton is north of San Fernando & Santa Clarita and East of an area called Little Rock. The thing that is so beautiful about Acton are the green hills and blue skies.  This areas rugged beauty is a stark contrast from the urban sprawl I grew up with in Orange County.  I can easily say that I wouldn’t mind living or working in a beautiful city like Acton.  The reason Empire-PLS came to Acton was to install some stop signs & poles, city street sign & poles as well as some parking lot striping. The Striping included mostly traffic marking such as stop and bars and directional arrow markings.

Traffic Stencil Painting Services

How our Stencil and Sign work Project Went Down

On this project we showed up to the job site in Acton, California at about 9:00 am.  We chose this time to allow most of the folks who needed to get out to work, to do so without having to worry about driving around cones and barricades. The temperature was a cool 45 degrees but by noon it was about 75 degrees and really nice to work in. We drove through the association to familiarize ourselves with the project and started right in on it.  The first thing we did was comb through the track spraying all of their stop and bars and a few directional arrows as well. We used water based paint and applied a heavy even coat to the stencils to assure a good coverage.  Once the parking lot striping including the stop stencils where completed we moved onto the sign work.  Our customers requested that we install some standard 30″ stop sign’s to a dozen or so of their existing square tubing sign post.  Our customer also required us to install some new sign and post using the anchor system. We installed a 12 gauge anchor system that allows our crew to work at ground level for faster installation and replacements. Our anchor system is installed directly into the ground, leaving 1 or 2 holes above ground level.  The sign post slides into the anchor for safe and easy installation. We ended up installing about 4 of these new signs and added the stop signs and street name signs to the top of them.

Stop Sign Installation

Trust Our Parking Lot Repair Services

Empire PLS has established a crew and special equipment dedicated to addressing these small jobs. This has allowed us to offer parking lot striping including repairing potholes in parking lots efficiently at a friendly price.  Empire-PLS is fully licensed and fully insured.  We are parking lot maintenance experts so, if it’s in a parking lot, we can fix it!

Call us today at (714) 633-0300 if your parking lot needs some pothole or asphalt repair

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Acton California Stop Signs and Striping? Yeah we do that!

What you Need to Know about Traffic Paint

The Good Stuff in the Paint is the Bad Stuff in the Environment.

All traffic paint contains pigment. Pigment is the colored solid material left on the pavement after the liquids have evaporated and/or been absorbed into the pavement.  Contractors are usually surprised to learn that there is a frequently wide range in the percentage of pigment used by different manufacturers. The bad news however is that manufacturers are taking more and more of the solids and solvents out of these products making them less effective then their predecessors. It’s not because they are trying to sabotage anyone it’s just they have to comply with local laws for air quality and those laws deem what acceptable levels of solids and solvents can be placed in those paints.

It’s also important to be aware that some manufacturers use different solvents in their paint.  Therefore, some brands may not be chemically compatible with other brands of paint. Incompatible paints may not “mix” together if combine in the same pail. For example, Brand X alkyd striping paint may not combine with Brand Y or Brand Z alkyd striping paint.  Wise contractors always ask their dealer for this type of information.  This can also apply to paint on the ground.  Be sure to hire a parking lot Painting contractor that has the foresight to know what products can go or what.  Often times we see where a customers will “paint the curbs in house” to save a few bucks.  This is where the nightmare begins.  When incompatible products are placed over one another the only real solution is total paint removal via sandblasting which can get costly.

Quality Traffic Paint = Quality Parking Lot Striping

By comparing the net weights of similar types of paint made by various manufacturers, you’ll instantly see which paint offers the most “solids.” That will be the paint that weighs the most.  Of course, the heavily pigmented paints are unlikely to be the cheapest. Furthermore, in a recessed economy we have noticed that most people are not willing to pay for the better product.

We try to urge every new customer to ask lots of questions from there contractors about paint compatibility.   Quite often a cheap job ends up costing them a small fortune in the long run.

Our criteria in selecting paint, other than price:

1. Workability
   
2. Consistently
   
3. Long life &  good “wear”
4. Color retention characteristics
5. Ability to stand up to hot tire
6. Wash-ability

Trust Our Parking Lot Repair Services

Empire PLS has established a crew and special equipment dedicated to addressing these small jobs. This allowed us to offer parking lot painting and other services including repairing potholes in parking lots efficiently at a friendly price.  Empire-PLS is fully licensed and fully insured.  We are parking lot maintenance experts so, if it’s in a parking lot, we can fix it!

Call us today at (714) 633-0300 if your parking lot needs parking lot painting!

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Parking Lot Painting: What you Need to Know About Traffic Paint