Roads resurfaced with tar and chipping stones.....

[StottyZr]

The main road near to my house was perfectly smooth and had no problems what-so-ever. They resurfaced it using this method for a good 1 mile until the road reached a crossroads and then left it as usual from there :S This made no sense at all! I couldn't actually believe they had resurfaced this perfectly good piece of road with absolute ste.

The road has already tramlined to hell as the surface is so st and in the wet changing lanes becomes a bit risky as the tyres fight to stay in the nice deep tramlines. Its fking bullst and the person responsible for this descision should be hung the fking idiot prick.

I've noticed a few more crashes on this road now with mobile speed cameras there quite often, can't help but think the crashes might not have happened if the road surface wasn't dangerous. Oddly enough, the road also had that extra grippy red tarmac as you approach the lights, this was also removed in place of this ste.

[Petrolhead_Rich]

micky g said:

I used to be the Contracts Manager for Derbyshires annual surface dressing programme. I am not defending the process, I hate taking my cars onto freshly dressed roads and tend to avoid them.

Surface dressing is not resurfacing, it’s preventative maintenance. It is carried out for a number of reasons, usually to stop the ingress of water into a crazed or damaged surface, (to increase the life of the existing surfacing) and / or to restore the skid resistance of the road in question.

Generally a layer of bitumen emulsion is sprayed onto the surface and the chippings are spread on top. A pneumatic tyred roller orientates the chippings and starts the embedment into the road surface, although this embedment process depends on the action of traffic over time to work fully. The work has to be carried out during fair weather as the road surface needs to be within temperature parameters for the dressing to work.

The roads are swept once the initial bond is made and they should be swept repeatedly until any excess of chippings is removed. Roads very often shed chippings that were not fully bedded when the first frosts of winter come and it’s worth being on the look out for this, particularly if you ride bikes.

Each road has its own dressing designed, it’s not a random process. The rate of spread of binder, size and skid resistance of the chippings being the basic factors which depend on the softness and condition of the existing road, extent of bends, speed of road, amount of shade and so forth.

The treated roads have usually settled after a few months and you will certainly drive over roads that have been dressed years ago and not realise now that you on a dressed surface.
Surface dressing works out at pennies per square meter for non urban locations and like it or not, it is the most cost effective maintenance available. It’s also widely used on the continent btw – it’s not just us tight Brits!

As I said, I don’t like it either, but I can’t think of a viable alternative.

Do the careful calculations of skid resistance take into account the complete lack of grip offered by loose chippings??

Surely it would be best to leave a cracked but flat level road with reasonable grip instead of coating it with this "dressing" that turns into tram lines and incurs massive skid risk for month's afterwards.

I've also never seen them swept afterwards, piles of loose chippings for months until the cars wear down to the original surface, yes, swept, I think not!

Thanks however for explaining the situation and giving the other side, please don't take my comments above as an attack at you, but rather an attack at the process completed the the majority of councils on the majority of roads I have seen "dressed" this way!

[BalhamBadger]

The council has just done this on my street in Bristol. It was incredibly noisy for a few weeks and very messy. There didn't seem to have been any effort to sweep up the excess stones, of which there were a substantial amount.

[Nedz]

thinfourth2 said:

nouze said:

mickey gee, does you think that if each person who had their car damaged would claim a cost of respray it would still be the most cost effective solution? it seems to me that the reason it is so effective is because the onus is on drivers as they do the actual "bonding".

So would you prefer

1 They didn't repair the roads as potholes are far better as you can drive round them without the potential disater of a stonechip

2 Increased council tax by a huge amount to cover the costs of repairs


The country is broke and this is the best you will get

The most annoying problem with this which some people still dont seem to grasp is that the roads that are being 'dressed' with this ste are the roads which are in perfectly good order and have suffered no damage or pot holes whatsoever from the two bad winters.

I can see that some people will say that they are doing this to to keep them that way but i dont see that it is required,the last two winters were unusual and i dont see them happening every year.There are many roads within half a mile which are obviously not of as sound construction and suffered terribly over the winter yet these have not been done.

Yes the country is broke and that,more than the damage this is doing to our cars is what annoys me most.If they are going to spend our money putting this ste on our roads then fair enough but please put it on the ones that fking need it.

[BOBTEE]

Well they've just done a second pass here so both sides of the road are 'completed'.

I think the biggest problem with this method is the workforce, they just don't give a st from what I've seen today! Matey driving the hot tar spraying machine hasn't gone right to the edge. Matey chucking out the chippings has missed bits that have been tarred and as for the chap driving Rolly, well frankly I don't know why he bothers showing up for work. Give him his pension and tell him to eff off!

I feel really sorry for one lad though. He must 16 or so and he's just aimlessly plodding around with a STOP/GO sign, what a life he has in front of him

[ButtonIt]

That same 16 year old will be half-arsedly chucking stones off the back of a wagon, driving roly with a fag hanging out his mouth or dropping tar in a random fashion in 10 years time. Laziness is a contagious disease, if 4 people are putting in minimal effort you can guarantee the 5th and 6th guy will be too.

[micky g]

Nouze, the stonechips to cars bodywork ‘shouldn’t’ arise if drivers comply with the advisory speed signs. (They don’t and again I’m not defending the process). The authority would argue that it was the negligence of other road users.

Petrolhead Rich, the skid resistance is quite an exact science that takes account of the microtexture of the new surface, (the roughness) and the macrotexture of the stone used, (the fine texture of the stone and it’s ability to resist skidding). A good example of macrotexture is where the approaches to junctions, pelicans are treated in a small chipping. They usually use basalt stone with an epoxy binder to create a surface like coarse grade sandpaper. This is a premium and very expensive type of dressing.

The authority has a duty of care to ensure that roads are maintained from the pov of skid resistance, (you may have noticed temporary signs warning of slippery surface on certain stretches of road). Some newly resurfaced roads are designed to be dressed within two or three years because the surface will lose its texture through polishing during that time.

With respect to sweeping, the dressed roads ‘should’ be swept repeatedly until the excess chippings are removed. Complain, I do.

Some designs fail, which will result in ‘fatty’ roads, tramlines of tar or the chippings stripping. This can be due to poor design, (many tenders are design and build so contractors tend to go with a minimum design in order to win the contract), or can be as a result of adverse weather following the works.

Nedz, good rant mate!

[Rick_1138]

My old man works in the local council, he sorts out the stuff in schools\parks\roadverges etc, and he liases with the roads manager a lot (aberdeenshire area).

we have these road 'dressings' starting up here now, and they are always a shower of shoite, dad complained to the roads manager last year when after a large section of road was done this way, aoiut 3 weeks later half of it was missing, rubbed off etc, and the guy just doesn't care, as far as he is concerned the road was 'done'.

The really annoying thing is Aberdeen City council has repaired 2 large sections of road i use to go home, and these were closed for a week each, and the old tar was broken up and fresh hot rolled tar was used to replace, its a quality reapir and should last a few years. however other roads in the city and shire get the (to use the local term) "Han-fey o glu n steens!" (a hansfull of tar and some stones! )and its bloody anoying when you come upon a road done like this, expecially when they leave the 20mph signs up for weeks!!

The worst i ever experienced was on a road i take home, there is a dip as the road meets a low bridge between 2 hills, the glue and stones (TM) had been placed that morning, but we had HUGE thunderstorms that day, and it washed all the loose stones to the bottom of this dip, i hit that 'quarry!' at 30 mph in my E36 318is, and basically had not control of the car as the wheels washed out in about 3" of gravel!!! i caught it before i met armco, but brown trouser time had happened!!

I phoned the council when i got home, to inform them they may want to sweep the road, i was basically told to foxtrot oscar.

if i had been on my bike, i would have been dead!!!

It will only get worse as there is less and less money for these things, dad can't wait to retire, as he keeps getting asked to do the same amount of jobs but with less and less cash, but they still find cash for think tanks and developing 'hot-desk' work systems...he despairs!