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Jeff Beeler is not a skin care expert, but the city’s public works superintendent sounds like one when explaining new techniques used to keep asphalt supple.
Yes, you read that right.
Supple.
Asphalt, like skin, needs to be flexible because it is constantly moving, Beeler said Monday night after giving the Warsaw City Council an update on road preservations efforts that began about three years ago.
One new strategy for the city is the use of a “rejuvenator,” a clear liquid application that helps keep pavement more pliable and is “like Vaseline for your road.”
“You put it on there and it kind of rehydrates it,” Beeler said.
Pavement naturally begins to oxidize and dry out, turning a light gray, making it more vulnerable to cracks, which open the door for water seeping into the asphalt, which creates potholes.
The rejuvenator has been used on several streets; Beeler wants to use it on Main Street, which was paved two years ago.
Ranch Road and Lake Street were paved at the same time, and the city later applied rejuvenator on Lake Street. Comparatively, Ranch Road is already seeing lots of cracks, Beeler said.
The use of a clear sealer can be a hard sell to the public, Beeler said, because they can’t see instant results.
He said he thinks some people equate nice roads with fresh black asphalt. That aesthetic consideration is overrated, said Beeler, who thinks the best assessment is whether potholes are popping up.
Another technique involves a more robust use of crack sealer, which helps prevent development of potholes.
The city has done crack sealing, and Beeler views it as the cheapest preservation option available.
The city used crack seal on all of Center Street three years ago at a cost of $112,000. The cost of repaving would have been about $800,000.
This year, he’d like to do some touch-up work at a cost of about $7,000.
A robust use of crack seal on sections of Country Club Road is showing early results. Parts of the road had been a perennial pothole problem.
“We crack sealed last year. We had zero (potholes). Not one,” Beeler said.
