Asphalt Paving and Sealcoat  Blog

How to Rebound from Setbacks

~Ruben Gonzalez (three time Olympian)

You will experience setbacks on the way to your dream. That's part of the game. But if you want something badly enough, victory is there for the taking. Success is a choice - your choice. Here are five life principles to help you make that choice.

Principle 1 - GO ALL THE WAY

When you decide that quitting is not an option, you will soon be in the top 10 percent of your field. Odds are, ninety percent of your competition will simply give up!

Principle 2 - CREATE A "DREAM TEAM"

Ninety percent of success is determined by whom you associate with. So create a Dream Team of people around you who will encourage you through the toughest times.

Principle 3 - GIVE YOURSELF A PEP TALK

It's easy to get down when things aren't going your way. After a bad luge run, sometimes I walk up and down the truack for 20 minutes, say: "I can do it!" I will make it, because there's always a way!" When you get down, pick yourself up and give yourself a pep talk. 

Principle 4 - LEARN FROM YOUR MISTAKES

High achievers believe that they will either do well at each task they tackle or they will learn something to help them win in the future. As funny as it sounds, most successful people "fail their way upwards." I was no differenct, crashing all the way to the top!

Principle 5 - RECOVER QUICKLY

When winners make mistakes, they don't waste time whining. They do whatever it takes to recover quickly, so they don't lose their momentum. When a boxer gets knocked down, he has only 10 seconds to get back up. If he gets up in eleven seconds, he loses the fight. 

So the next time you get knocked down, decide to act like a winner. Get up, take immediate action and make your dream a reality!

Architect finds beauty in the asphalt jungle

By Karen Campbell, Globe Correspondent

Most of us walk, drive, and park on it every day, but we rarely give asphalt a second thought - until we trip on a crack or hit a pothole or notice with dismay yet another instance where someone "paved paradise and put up a parking lot," as the Joni Mitchell song "Big Yellow Taxi" recounts.

But if landscape architect Paula Meijerink has anything to say about it, the way we vilify this most common of industrial materials is about to change. An assistant professor of landscape architecture at Harvard's Graduate School of Design, Meijerink has been addressing innovative ideas in asphalt design with her students and is cultivating a variety of grass-roots projects that bring new attention to what she calls "the asphalt universe." Meijerink wants people to rethink how we use the material in terms of both creativity and function.

Passersby in the South End may have been drawn into the "Steamroller Printing" event Meijerink and her crew held in the GTI Properties parking lot on Harrison Avenue last month. Using two steamrollers from sponsor Aggregate Industries, the group created more than 200 one-of-a-kind posters by pressing magnesium plates on tar paper. Featuring a planetary-themed design by Rik Olson and sporting the tag "Rethink the Asphalt Universe," the posters will be folded and included in a book called "Asphalt" that Meijerink is putting together and distributing through the design school in the next three months.

Meijerink, who is a partner in a local design collective called Wanted, also initiated a website, www.onasphalt.com, that is starting to bring designers, students, and industry professionals together with the goal of rethinking the material, and serving as a conduit for greater knowledge and creativity in asphalt design.

"It's one of the most liberating materials of the 20th century, increasing our mobility, allowing us to travel," Meijerink maintains, citing its cheapness, sustainability, and malleability. "It's the real public landscape, at the crux of what we're thinking about in terms of designing our open space, and we have to rethink the role asphalt plays in our lives."

Margaret Cervarich, vice president for marketing and public affairs for the National Asphalt Pavement Association, agrees. "Asphalt is an indispensable part of the modern structure of life. In the US, we do 550 million tons of asphalt hot mix paving a year. One of the important things Paula and her group are doing is just saying 'Let's take another look.' Seldom is something this common looked at with a different perspective. Paula's group is saying 'Here we have this extraordinary material that we take for granted - how can we use it in a new, relevant way so that we're being sensitive to the environment, to the needs of human beings, and still providing adequate structures?' 

  Click here to read the full article THE BOSTON GLOBE NEWS

Concrete Curb & Gutter Req., Design, and Drainage

Requirements

Curbs must meet several basic requirements if they are to serve their intended purposes and have long service life. Curbs must have the required mass, stability and strength to withstand the impacts of traffic and the effects of their environments and to maintain their positions even when crossed by traffic or struck by snowplows. They must have the strength to bridge small areas where subgrade support is inadequate. In a minute I'll discuss designing curb sections to have adequate stability.

The standard sections shown in Figure II have been proven to have the necessary mass for strength and stability. Separate curb and gutter sections should be at least two feet wide with greater widths having more stability for a relatively small amount of construction costs.

In severe environments, curbs must have adequate durability to resist freeze-thaw cycles while being buried in snow and ice plowed to the sides of streets and being saturated with brine from deicing salts that is carried to the sides.

Another important requirement is visibility. Because of their light and reflective surfaces, concrete curbs can be easily seen, even at night when pavements are wet. The washings of rain and the removal of debris by street sweeping are sufficient to meet this requirement.

Curb Design

The design of curbs is more dependent on successful experience and regional preferences, and less on rigorous analyses compared to the design of other concrete structures. The review of a few available publications on concrete curbs reveals what types have been used but there is no specification regarding the forces acting on curbs or calculations on reducing stresses to acceptable limits. This is because experience has shown that curb sections proportioned to have adequate mass to provide the required stability are unlikely to fail from any imposed loads or impacts. Like other concrete members, curbs should be jointed or reinforced to accommodate the effects of volume changes due to shrinkage, temperature, or moisture changes. Jointing and reinforcing will be discussed in a later blog, so sit tight fot that.

Besides meeting the basic requirements discussed above, good curb design should allow economical and efficient construction. Economical construction results from designs that reduce labor, permit the use of any of the efficient curb forming machines available today, and take advantage of standardized cross sections that provide the necessary properties. Minor variations in shapes or dimensions that add nothing to the strength or utility should be avoided. Templates or "mules" can be manufactured for any desired cross-sections form curb shapes, but they are costly. If the entire cost of a special mule must be amortized on a single project, the cost of the curb must necessarily be increased to cover that expense, even though the utility of the curb is not increased over that of a similar standard section.

 

Curb Drainage

For combined curb and gutter sections, the aprons (the portions between pavements and the faces of the curbs) should have adequate hydraulic capacity to carry runoff from most rainstorms. Making aprons wider reduces the opportunity for rainwater to move down through joints between curbs and pavements. Wider aprons may also discourage drivers from driving close to curbs.

Since one important function of curbs is to collect runoff, provisions must be made periodically to drain water away before the roadways are flooded. In areas where there are storm sewers, the flow in gutters is diverted through inlets built into the curbs and/or gutters. In semi-arid regions where rains are infrequent, inlets are sometimes only gaps in curbs through which water can exit. In most other places, inlets are fitted with iron castings designed to match the shapes of the curbs (another good reason for using standard shapes), and with grates that extend one or two feet into the gutters. The spacing of inlets depends on the amounts of water that must be handled, and are calculated to avoid flooding of streets or roadways except on infrequent occasions, such as once every ten or twenty years. While inlet locations must be governed by rainfall and pavement elevations, designers should consider their effects on curb jointing. Inlets, which are more or less anchored in place, should be isolated from curbs and gutters.

Because the sides of streets adjacent to curbs are often used by bicyclists, it is important that grates in the aprons of curbs have openings that will not be safety hazards to bicycle wheels. Grates are available that allow for the safe passage of bicycles.

Types of Concrete Curbs, Gutters

Concrete curbs are generally classified as barrier curbs or mountable curbs. Either type can be constructed in many different shapes, depending on regional preferences, purposes and construction costs. Typical cross sections of the most commonly used curbs and curb and gutter sections are shown in Figure II. Barrier curbs, also known as straight curbs, resemble the stone slabs used originally for curbs and form abrupt obstacles to vehicles leaving pavements.

Mountable curbs, sometimes referred to as roll curbs, have sloping faces that allow vehicles to encroach on them without damaging tires and wheels; and if the slopes are gentle enough, cars can cross them to access driveways. Curbs that cannot be crossed without damage or discomfort must have sections where the heights of the curbs are reduced for vehicular entrances. The low portions are usually referred to as depressed curbs. When curbs are constructed in areas where buildings have already been erected and driveways established, the depressed portions can be easily designated, but in developing areas where the driveways have not been located, mountable curbs are usually preferred.

Either type of curb can have an apron or gutter section attached and become a combined curb and gutter. Combined curb and gutter sections are commonly used along streets and parking lots in urban areas, especially with asphalt pavements, to provide the advantages of stable concrete gutters with sustainable flow lines along the curbs.

Because concrete can be readily shaped to transition between cross-sections, curbs can be tapered to meet ramps for pedestrian crossings where these are preferred or to meet requirements for the disabled.

Curbs built monolithically with concrete pavements project above the pavement at the edges. These are referred to as monolithic curbs or integral curbs, as opposed to separate curbs. As the edges of concrete pavements with the added thickness of curbs are stronger and stiffer, deflections caused by heavy wheels close to the outside edges are reduced. Where curbs are cast on hardened concrete slabs, resulting in cold joints between the curbs and slabs, there are opportunities for planes of weakness and water penetration, which can result in shortened service life.

A separate curb and gutter must be tied to the pavement slab with deformed steel bars if there is to be effective load transfer. If a curb is separate from the pavement the joint between the pavement and the curb may require maintenance.

The advantages of concrete curbs and gutters on parking lots and roads

Many people do not understand the use and importance of concrete curbs and gutter sections along the edges of streets, parking lots, and other pavements. The advantages of using uniform designs and standard sections are listed below.

A curb, by definition, is something that restrains; an enclosing border or edging; a raised edge or margin; a wall; or as a verb, to strengthen or confine something. As most people think of curbs, they are raised strips of concrete along the edges of streets or parking lots. The benefits of curbs have been recognized since ancient times, and stone curbs were placed along the edges of traveled ways by early civilizations. Today's concrete curbs still provide many of the same benefits, and more.

Concrete curbs or combined curbs and gutters serve several important functions. Curbs collect water from crowned pavements and convey it to points of collection, thus reducing the amount of water that gets under the pavement. They outline the edges of pavements and provide easily definable borders between traveled and untraveled surfaces. They confine pavement structures, especially if the pavements are composed of layers of materials that must be compacted in-place. Curbs help contain low speed traffic within the edges of pavements.

Besides serving the purposes listed above, curbs provide several other advantages. The neat, straight lines of curbs add to the attractiveness of parking lots and streets, and the commonly used expression "curb appeal" implies that attractiveness of adjacent properties are also enhanced by sharp demarcations between streets and lawns.

Curbs strengthen pavements. The confining of flexible pavements by concrete curbs improves compaction during construction and helps maintain the integrity of edges under traffic. The added thickness given to edges of concrete pavements by integral curbs increase strength and stiffness, reduce deflections induced by traffic loads, and therefore extends pavement life.

Curbs reduce the amount of space or right-of-way required for a street by eliminating drainage swales and their flat side slopes; curbs also reduce the lengths of driveways built from streets to homes or businesses. In some jurisdictions where both curbed and uncurbed streets are allowed by subdivision ordinances, streets with curbed sections require less dedicated right-of-way than streets without curbs, for example 50 ft for local streets with curbs, or 60 ft for local streets without curbs. The elimination of drainage swales also reduces maintenance by eliminating the cleaning of ditches, the mowing of ditch banks, and the care of culverts and their end sections that carry water under driveways.

Light reflective surfaces of concrete curbs delineate pavement edges and improve visibility for drivers at night, thus promoting safety. Where there are no concrete curbs to outline the edges of roads and streets, it is now common practice to mark the pavement edges with stripes of white paint.

Curbs improve the efficiency of street sweepers by concentrating debris for easy, mechanical pickup, as opposed to having it scattered along shoulders and drainage swales where it must be picked up by hand.

Concrete curbs have the integrity to withstand the impacts of snowplows.

A comparison of pavement sections with curbs and without curbs is shown in the figure below, illustrating the advantages in land use provided by concrete curbs. It should be noted that most of the advantages listed above pertain only to concrete curbs or concrete curbs and gutters that extend down to the bottom of pavements. Adding asphalt curbs along the edges of asphalt pavements cannot provide the confinement to improve compaction or other long-term benefits.

Sealcoat is the best asphalt pavement maintenance

Maintaining asphalt pavement with sealcoat every three years saves an average of $15.25 per square yard or $152,000.00 for a parking lot averaging 10,000 square yards. This translates into more than 48% in savings over unmaintained asphalt. 

Parking lot maintenance is most economical when consistently performed from the outset. However, it is never too late to implement a maintenance plan that will optimize your current pavement's condition and prolong its life.

Save thousands by properly maintaining your asphalt pavement

The benefits to consistent parking lot maintenance are clear:

• Protecting your asphalt pavement investment

• Avoiding serious liability issues to tenants, guests and customers

• Beautify the landscape and appearance

• Plus - save more than 48% over unmaintained pavement

Let's talk about Maintenance Savings and a way to free up revenue. Unmaintained (or unsealed) asphalt pavement will likely require repairs after the first two years. Furthermore, this unmaintained surface may require  overlay as early as seven years, versus fifteen years for a maintained parking area.

According to a study performed by Girish C. Dubey, chairperson of the Pavement Coatings Technology Center at the University of Nevada at Reno, maintaining asphalt pavement with sealcoat every three years saves an average of $15.25 per square yard or $152,500.00 for a parking lot averaging 10,000 square yards. This translates into more than 48% in savings over unmaintained asphalt. Maintaining asphalt with sealcoat is a small expense that secures nearly 300% increase in asphalt life as well as the aforementioned maintenance cost savings.

Parking lot maintenance is most economical when consistently performed from the outset. However, it is never too late to implement a maintenance plan that will optimize your current pavement's condition and prolong its life.

So how about you save thousands by properly maintaining your asphalt pavement for years to come? It only gets worse with time if not taken care of. Call a pavement expert to find out what you can and should be doing. 

Why do a bunch of asphalt repair when you can sealcoat?

A lot of people, I know not you...but many just wait till the asphalt is so damaged that it must be repaired with severe measures. Research and studies prove that you can save approximately half the cost of maintenance on your pavement if you sealcoat consistently from the outset.

The weather is going to be getting warmer soon and it will be time to look at pavement that needs attention. Asphalt repairs can be prevented by a simple pavement maintenance plan and sealcoating the asphalt every few years. Let's talk about sealcoating...but first the problem, then I'll provide the solution. 

Asphalt is a combination of many materials composed in a structure that allows for weather elements (such as rain), salts, and other substances to attack and break it down. As the asphalt molecules break down, much of the original benefits - including weatherproofing - are lost. This is first observed visually by the color change in the asphalt surface:from black to brownish gray.

The rate of pavement deterioration depends upon many variables including weather or climate conditions, traffic volumes and frequency of maintenance. After the visual change in color of the asphalt surface, weather, oils and other harmful materials can significantly deteriorate the pavement surface. Oils from vehicle engines, often parked stationary for long periods of time, can cause considerable damage to an unmaintained pavement surface.

Also, further deterioration of unmaintained pavement leads to minor cracks which become wider and deeper without remedy. If these cracks are not remedied, water and other harmful substances will seep into the base and damage the pavement's load bearing capacity, ultimately causing pavement failure. The effects of this are shown in serious alligatoring, rutting, and overall pavement failure. Before long, your parking lot is riddled with cracks, potholes and drainage issues that are seemingly beyond repair.

Unmaintained asphalt shows its deterioration and damage
quickly, in as little as two years, and cracks and potholes quickly develop. Once the cracking forms, lack of proper maintenance will lead to serious liability issues caused by severe potholes and your pavement investment will be in risk of complete failure. The deterioration of unmaintained asphalt happens exponentially faster than maintained asphalt and, consequently, costs much more money over time.

The Remedy/Solution every smart property owner/manager, facility manager, and business owner is doing to keep asphalt repair expenses down to free up revenue.

Sealcoat, specifically refined coal tar, is a mixture of chemicals with a structure that does not allow destructive elements to affect its properties. This material, as a protective coat for asphalt, forms a barrier to protect against weather, salts, oils, and destructive substances that lead to pavement failure. This sealant also restores the asphalt's rich black color, dramatically improving property appearance.

Potential customers' and guests' first impression is your parking lot; a fresh, new appearance will be the best
presentation no matter your industry. By consistently protecting the asphalt pavement from deterioration and from failure, you are prolonging the life of your original asphalt by as much as eight years, or almost double the expected life of an unmaintained pavement surface, without considerable investment in an overlay or other significant remedy.

Parking lot maintenance with sealcoat usually means a three to five year cycle of sealcoating, including crackfill for developing cracks later in the pavement's life cycle, which prolongs the original pavement's life as well as ensuring the appearance of your property.

By evaluating your properties' parking lots on a
necessity basis(or better yet have an pavement expert come check it out free), all parking lot concerns could be easily amortized over three to five years - effectively eliminating your parking lot concerns.

Why go through the need for asphalt repairs every few years when you can sealcoat every few years and save up to half the cost?

What do you think?