News

Seal coat project completed

By Scott Wagar

08/21/2012

A company out of Minnesota spent a number of days in Bottineau this past week seal coating a number of streets in the community which have been part of the city’s paving project in the past few years, granting the streets a longer existence.

“A seal coat provides asphalt back into the pavement to extend the life of the pavement,” said Matt Johnson of Wold Engineering. “Asphalt is weakened in the pavement and the chip seal provides asphalt back into the pavement giving it a longer life cycle.”

The procedure of seal coating takes a number of steps, which must be done in order and in a timely manner. The first stage of the project is for a distributor truck to spray oil on the pavement. That is followed by a piece of equipment called a chip spreader which comes behind the distributor truck and covers the oil with pre-coated rock. It normally takes the oil truck and chip spreader three full passes to cover a residential street.

Once the pre-coated rock is placed, two to three heavy machines called rubber tile rollers drive over the rock a number of times to pack it securely into the oil.

Normally after the application, a power broom machine will sweep loose rock to the side of the streets. About a week later, a street sweeping machine will sweep and pick up any loose rock that has accumulated on the streets.  

“This process takes a short amount of time to complete,” Johnson said. “The oil needs to be covered within a minute or so.”

The seal coat project cost is $308,950, which the city paid for through the Street Fund.

Outside of preserving the streets and granting it a longer life cycle, seal coating also can reduce the cost on future street projects, saving local residents tax money which is used to pay for street projects.
ASTECH (Asphalt Surface Technologies) from St. Cloud, Minn., conducted the seal coat in a three day period.