NICK GOSNELL
Hutch Post
HUTCHINSON, Kan. — The Hutchinson City Council approved this year's arterial street maintenance project at the council meeting Tuesday.
"It's going to be an ultra thin asphalt surfacing that we will be putting on 30th Avenue from Waldron to Main Street," said Jeff Schenk with engineering. "This is a section that was last done in 2014. The reason that I selected it was, looking back at the historical data, I noticed that the mill and overlays had been done in 1994, 2002 and 2014, at eight and 12 years. Our last 12 year mill and overlay, we had to do some extensive base work. Looking at the surface, it is still in really good condition. We decided to go with this, it's a 5/8 inch thick armor coating. We have it on Avenue A and on K-61. The thought is, I think we can double the life expectancy of the road. KDOT has had extremely good luck with this material. It's about half the price of a full mill and overlay, which is the typical treatment."
The low bid was $934,076.35 from APAC Kansas.
"They put down a thin layer of oil and then they put down 5/8 inch of asphalt with an extremely hard aggregate," Schenk said. Basically, when the oil goes down, when the asphalt goes on top of it, it pulls the oil up and then it seizes and makes an extremely protective coating. The other thing about ultrathin bonded asphalt surface, it's a little bit different, is you don't get road spray. In rain events, the water actually goes through the aggregate, so, if you're following behind a semi, you aren't sitting there just constantly getting drenched from the rain."
Emulsion can be sprayed while laying hot mix asphalt simultaneously, resulting in no tracking along other streets or oil spray on vehicles. The result is a long-lasting, flexible and smoother surface that can be driven on almost immediately.
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