asphalt recycling carter street 7 8 16
Uploaded by Michael Dinan on 2016-07-11.
Using a new, energy- and cost-saving technology, workers hired by the town last week re-paved all of Silvermine Road and Carter Street.
The method (see video above)—called ‘hot-in-place asphalt recycling’—sees heavy equipment traverse an existing road, heating it up, milling it, scraping it up and pulling the material into a “pug mill,” then adding a rejuvenating agent and paving the very same asphalt out the backside of the large vehicle, according to Tiger Mann, assistant director of the New Canaan Department of Public Works.
“It takes out cracks and anomalies but you don’t have to mill and take it away and bring it back, so it is very much environmentally friendly in that regard and there’s a very large cost-savings,” Mann said.
Performed by Brewster, N.Y.-based Highway Rehab Corp., the work cost about $400,000 for the two roads—paid out of the approximately $2.5 million that New Canaan allocates each year to road maintenance.
In 2014, the town had the same process done on in the South of the Y neighborhood in the Butler Lane area, Mann said, and plans to do Frogtown Road and the entire length of Ponus Ridge next year.
Not every road is a candidate for the method, as road conditions and tree canopy both are factors, he said.
Later this week or next, a ‘micro-thin overlay’ of asphalt will go on top of the roads just finished, according to Mann. The project will mean single-lane alternating traffic for about two days on Carter and Silvermine, he said.
The hot-in-place asphalt recycling process delivers roads that shouldn’t need to be touched for seven to 10 years, he said.