I recently emailed a local council regarding the state of one of its roads. Last year this had been resurfaced using the method of basically lying loose stones on the top and letting the traffic flatten it down. The road is unbelievably noisy to drive over, always has loose stones, and I have suffered several stone chips as a result.
Am I being unfair in thinking that this surface is absolutely not suitable and cannot understand why standard tarmac surface was not laid. Obviously cost cutting exercise and total disregard of how it affects people's vehicles. This is a stretch of road, probably about a mile long, that accesses the M8.
Here is the reply I got:
You are correct that the carriageway was resurfaced recently which was using a surface dressing treatment at the end of July 2017. Unfortunately this treatment has failed, however rest assured the road is in a reasonable condition to travel on.
The road is continually being monitored and swept when necessary to remove any loose material from the carriageway.
The works were originally carried out under satisfactory conditions at the time as recommended in the Industry Design Guide for Surface Dressing and completed on 31st July 2018. The road was inspected immediately after the works were completed and was totally satisfactory. The rates of spread of the bitumen and chippings were good and there was not much evidence of excess chippings at the time.
However, there was very heavy and substantial rainfall later that afternoon and into the evening which may have had an effect on the dressing. There were also several substantial showers for the remainder of the week at various times. If the weather had been fair and dry for a couple of weeks afterwards, then the dressing would have had a better chance of success as the process relies on secondary compaction of the chips by passing traffic. The road was swept several times immediately after laying the chips as this process is required to take off the excess chippings to allow the carriageway markings to be reinstated. Roads and Transportation were continually monitoring the condition of all of the sites in the programme since completion and all of them seemed satisfactory in the months immediately afterwards, although one of the other sites was slightly heavily chipped.
However, around the end of October and into November, the surfacing on XXXXX Road was probably beginning to lose more chips than was desirable so we were keeping a closer eye on it at this time. During the month of December the road continued to lose chips from the surface so we arranged to meet with the contractor early in the New Year to discuss possible remedial action. Arrangements were made for the road to be swept on a continual basis as and when necessary until the road ceased to give up it’s loose chips.
As surface dressing is a seasonal process, remedial works can only be carried out between the months of May to August as recommended in the Industry Design Guide for Surface Dressing, when weather conditions are suitable. Therefore, we’ll need to wait until then for the works to be done. The remedial works will be carried out again under full road closure but with access to the distillery, and at the contractor’s expense, so there will be no additional cost to the Council.
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Looks as if they had a time machine as well as the tar sprayer and chip chucker.
In the last week several minor roads round here have had the same treatment. Incredibly, while the potholes were drained and swept out, they haven't been filled so the local county councillor is on the case. The potholes are still there, just harder to spot. The mind boggles. The council outsourced it of course.
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This method has been used since 1926, but its standard depends entirely on the quality of the original tarmac and its depth.
Local main roads have been done using the method and, within six months, the contractor has had to redo the work because the surface broke up and it was no better than before.
However, in my street, although a major inlet to various roads in the area, the impressive thickness of tarmac laid down ensured that the later stone chippings addition proved excellent and very, very few stones were thrown up by the side of the pavement.
If it can be done for more minor residential roads it can certainly be done for nearby major roads and, even more so, if it saves the cost (to the contractor) of having to do the work all over again, including road markings, zebra crossings etc.
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It seems to be a passing fashion on our minor roads, just to spread a couple of inches of gravel over the surface and then leave the traffic to flatten it. Most of it gets sprayed into the hedges or blocks the drains, and the old surface reappears after a few weeks. Totally pointless exercise.
Now though they have gone back to using proper hot tarmac and roller.
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And dont forget how many car windscreens that need to be replaced from the stones that havent stuck to the road surface.
One dual carriage way surface near me was replaced on the cheap and as a result in 4 months I had two windscreens replaced.
every time some clever chap thinks they can save a bob on cutting corners, someone else ALWAYS foots the bill
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When I was properly employed I was somewhat involved in a resurfacing trial in town couple of decades ago where a machine planed off the top few inches... ground the material to an aggregate... then mixed that material with a tar based binder then re-laid it from the rear of the machine to be rolled as a fully finished surface with no loose elements.
Certainly in my time "in the business" they never used the process again as it was so much faff.
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>> every time some clever chap thinks they can save a bob on cutting corners, someone
>> else ALWAYS foots the bill
There's a rule that applies to nearly everything. It appears in many forms, including the first law of thermodynamics and the third law of motion; if you squeeze a balloon in one place it will bulge out somewhere else; you can't get anything for nothing; there's no such thing as a free lunch; there are two sides to every coin.
It's literally everywhere you look. Something I have discovered through my new illness is that each of the several drugs I take every day does something useful and something I would rather it didn't.
I'm about to go and wash a car. It will probably rain this afternoon;)
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As I understand it surface dressing of roads is not intended to be a substitute for resurfacing. It is is designed to lengthen the life span of the surface before resurfacing is required. It seal cracks in the roads preventing water penetration and UV damage and increases the grip. Councils see it as a cost efficient way of reducing the repair bill which I guess it is.
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It's not the basic principle of spraying tar and then rolling some grit into it that seems faulty - it's the massive over-application of coarse chippings that haven't a hope of getting pressed down into such a thin layer of tar.
I've even seen it done without any application of tar at all. Like spreading new gravel on a drive and then expecting to be able to use it as a race track.
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I am still impressed by the thick epoxy layer that was added some years ago to our ( side ) street.
No fuss laying it. The only down side is that it has caused some puddles as the drainage is a little messed up.
The road is 1930 concrete slabs with tar on top and the new skin was just poured on top.
Absolutely no idea why our road was selected for this expensive treatment.
It was done with a German machine sporting German registration plates.
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Surface dressing is bad enough to drive a car on, but a nightmare on two wheels. This is especially true on unclassified roads where there isn't enough traffic to hammer the chips down.
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As they say:
You cant polish a turd but you can sprinkle glitter on it.
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I was surprised when I visited the Isle-of-Man a few years ago and saw part of the TT course had this treatment.
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Road Surface Dressing - Manatee
