Posted on 08/27/2011 6:14:06 AM PDT by johniegrad
I live in the lakes country in northern Minnesota where the roads take a beating from trucks, salt, and hostile weather conditions. Road work is a constant feature of summer living here.
This summer a 25 mile stretch of two lane highway from Duluth to our cabin is being resurfaced. I am accustomed to seeing the roadbed excavated and new asphalt being brought in to fix the roads.
However, this year there appears to be a new process. Rather than bringing any new materials in, the process appears to make use of the existing asphalt by heating it and smoothing it out. There is a machine that heats one lane of the road at a time and appears to melt the surface material, either mixing it with something else, or simply reusing it to establish a better surface.
Driving on the finished product is certainly smoother but you can still feel the underlying unevenness of the road.
The only thing I can find on line that appears to describe the process is something called "hot in place recycling".
It doesn't appear to be a tremendous improvement in the road surface to me and it seems as though it is not something that would hold up very well.
Since FR seems to have a lot of experts out there on virtually every subject, is anyone familiar with this type of process? What are the advantages and disadvantages? It would certainly seem to be cheaper that other road repair methods but, from what I have seen so far, I question its durability.
Not typically a FR type question so sue it, it's a vanity.
all i know about road resurfacing is that it’s stimulus to unions and bullish for The Mob.
Our cabin is east of Duluth, in Wisconsin. We always "laugh" when we cross the state line and the roads improve 100%.
Is the road made of 100 percent recycled asphalt then ?
Eric, I think just the surface. There is road bed below.
I grew up in Superior, if I grew up at all, and know every lake and river in Douglas Country from fishing. The only summer I had off in medical school was between the freshman and sophomore years. I was on a Navy scholarship so they paid me full active duty pay and expected nothing in turn. Rather than get a second job, I went fishing every day. What a great summer. It’s been all downhill since then ;-)
I needed some class 5 for my driveway and called the guy who delivered last about 6 years ago. Before I identified myself, without thinking I asked him if he was still doing business as "XYZ Trucking". He asked me why I wanted to know.
Cheap resurfacing is preferred by politicians because it needs to be redone frequently, necessitating frequent campaign contributions to win contracts. A quality road lasts, so contributions are less frequent. And what politician really knows how long he’ll be around?
Fascinating procedure and it really works!
Cheapie resurface to make the politicians good.
Kinda like wetting yourself wearing dark trousers. Gives you a nice warm feeling, but nobody seems to notice.
There’s nothing wrong with the old material but it sounds like they’re just doing a crappy job.
I live near Michigan International Speedway and when they resurface that, they mill the old surface and it goes into the surrounding roads.
Apple, that process looks to be more thorough and involved than what is going on here.
Anyway....when the 54mpg rules kick in only outlaws will have V8's
the rest of the peons on Al Bores wooden bicycles.
When did you live in SoupTown?
BTW! Too frequently on FR, someone asks a legitimate question and all that result are irrelevant rants
I drove up every few weeks from the Cities (we lived in Prior Lake for 16 years.) My office was in St. Paul.
My job was to sell our oil (supplied mostly by Murphy) and delivery service to steamship lines. This put me on Northwest Airlines off to Cleveland and Buffalo quite a bit, plus Duluth for US Steel’s Great lakes Fleet. I left in 1997.
This job was one of the best...
As far as the remarks are concerned, I don't really care. Sometimes it's good to inject a little levity into the joint.
I don’t think it is necessarily cheaper to do this process.... but there are advantages, especially on mountainous roads or heavy traffic roads. It’s faster to do, so it less impact on traffic. They don’t have to break up the old road and haul it away in dump-truck loads which takes time, requires a lot of extra working space and holds up traffic more while they are working.
They told me that the success of the end result depends greatly on the project chemist getting the mixture right. As their machine breaks and grinds up the old surface, the on-site chemist tests the ground up stuff and determines the proper mixture for the new surface.... it is mixed right there, added to the machine and the procedure continues.
Like I mentioned before.... this company is having great success here in Georgia. Maybe the Minnesota company needs to take a lesson from this GA company??
:)
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