The quality of the material you use for your road base is crucial. But even more important is having a good plan and taking your time when you put it all together. You need good materials, a solid plan, and the patience to make sure everything goes smoothly while laying a good asphalt foundation.
FIRST – QUALITY
Quality of material – A quality road base material can be several things, and you have several options as long as you have a good design and you’re patient with the installation:
The quickest and most effective or reliable road base on the market will be the same road base that the Department of Transportation requires when a contractor is building a state road. This road base is, “composed of natural gravel, crushed rock, or crushed slag.” (a) We ensure the correct amount of aggregate sizes and shapes. The most expensive but may only be a few hundred dollars more and definitely something to ask for an estimate on.
- You also have a road base material that has not gone through inspections and the specific requirements the state wants for their roads, however, it’s good road base.
You can also use recycled asphalt road base materials as road base. “Concrete/Asphalt recycling has become an increasingly popular method of utilizing aggregate that is left behind when structures or roadways are demolished. This eliminates the need for using landfills, thereby helping with environmental concerns while keeping construction costs down.” (b) This takes a little bit longer time to compact. So, I would definitely pay attention to step number three. To make sure the recycled materials perform.
- Recycled concrete can also be ground down to path-inch minus aggregate with fines that can be compacted. The importance to note that these aggregates are crushed rock or concrete which bind together as opposed to pebbles that have round edges that will never make great foundations for asphalt.
SECOND – DESIGN
- Quality design involves taking the time to grade your compacted road base material, whichever road base you choose. The design ensures you are creating the desired slope that allows water to run off the asphalt, avoiding pools of water on your asphalt, or water trapped at the edge of your asphalt not being able to drain. And sooner or later, there will be cracks; everything cracky.
- Surrendering to the inevitable crack. Cracking asphalt is going to happen with or without a good design. The design, slope of your Asphalt can help get the water off quickly. Of course, you’re going to need to do maintenance with sealcoating and crack seal. But an extremely flat, uncrowned, or sloped parking lot or driveway will be the beginning of lots of problems.
Potholes are created because the road base fails underneath the asphalt. The number one thing that causes road base to fail is water. Water penetrates through asphalt via cracks; if there’s no water or if you can minimize the amount of water that sits on top of a crack, you can minimize your potholes.
THIRD – PATIENCE
Rushing an installation is not worth it. Believe me, take a little flak from your HOA members, be strategic in how you replace your commercial parking lot, and definitely be patient on a new paved job.
- What does that appear as? A lot of times, we imagine how beautiful the finishing touches of Asphalt add to the new commercial building or add to the parade of homes wrap-around driveway. And we’re excited to get to that point. With a little planning, you can avoid almost 100% of the problems you would have experienced by rushing.
- Don’t bury your problems. Here’s an example. In this particular case, let’s say you’re ripping out a few hundred square feet or a thousand square feet of failed Asphalt. You’ve scheduled the contractor to come in and do it in one day.
Definitely, a contractor can rip out a thousand square feet, put it in a dump truck. Then haul it to the plant, come back with hot asphalt, and in that time of two or three hours. The asphalt company could do their best to roll over, compact, regrade, etc., so that your asphalt foundation looks good. But believe me, sharp-looking graded road base does not guarantee anything. You should consider leaving the road base exposed for a week or two.
- Test your base material and design. See if it is fixed before you lay down the big bucks. Allowing your customers or your neighbors to drive on it again and again. Even if it’s your RV pad or the driveway that you’re replacing at your home. You should find the heaviest equipment and drive on. The compacted road base to find out where the weak spots are. It won’t take long, and you’ll find a soft spot or two that may need to be addressed.
You’ll find the sprinklers that need to be adjusted so that you don’t have a muddy driveway, or failed asphalt driveways two years from now. If you can just imagine not being rushed and putting up with a little bit of dust. The three or four inches of asphalt you’re going to lay on top of it will have a real chance at providing the durability and cost effectiveness that you want out of your existing asphalt.
Failing to be patient with the proper road base design and preparation. Prematurely burying whatever evidence you had as to why your asphalt failed. May be Northern Utah’s number one reason for perpetually failing asphalt road base foundations, which always cause the asphalt to fail.
Asphalt experts are invaluable in asphalt paving projects. By utilizing techniques like hot mix asphalt and asphalt concrete to create durable road surfaces capable of withstanding heavy traffic. One of the key benefits they bring is asphalt milling, a process that removes old pavement layers. It improve the integrity of the road surface.
By employing full-depth removal when necessary, they ensure a solid foundation for the new pavement, reducing future maintenance requirements. Whether working on new installations or repairing existing pavement, these professionals prioritize quality and longevity. Delivering paving solutions that meet the demands of heavy traffic and paving projects of all scales.
Trust Asphalt Experts – Your Partner for Asphalt Care Excellence in Utah.
Clearfield