&##^%## Fricken Chip Seal road work!!

[OutHouse]

Colorado DOT just started to chip seal the road i drive to work on. so now i have 20 miles of gravel to drive on. This pisses me off. there was absoutly nothing wrong with the road. the asphalt was only 2 years old after they rototilled it and layed down new blacktop. It was super smooth to drive on, no cracks, potholes at all. I sent a bitch letter to CDOT wanting to know why that just F*cked up a perfectly good road where there are many around here that needed the attention. Its just a matter of time before my windshield is cracked and the front end of new camry gets all chipped.

I can not take another road into work, if i do its a 50 mile detour. Some may say slow down and not follow too close. well i do that and have, but i cant control the asshats who are on the oncoming lane and are riding the center line where the loose gravel is and spraying the crap all over the place. it sounds like a shotgun blast just hit my car. :| :|

For those of you who dont know what chip seal road work is where they spray the road with liquid asphalt then use a spreader and spread about 1 inch of 16mm gravel over the hot liquid asphalt then use steamrollers to press the rock down.

 

[Demon-Xanth]

Chip and seal definately sucks. In pretty much every way but cost.

 

[moshquerade]

I agree - it is major suckage!

 

[MaxDSP]

I know how you feel...theres sh!tloads of roads around here that need repair but the ones they work on for years are ones that arent nearly as bad as the others.

 

[Anubis]

gonna go with the suckage

 

[Aharami]

same around here. there are plenty of roads around here that needs to be repaired...instead the govt decides to repair the one road that wasnt damaged at all!

also i take this one long road to work....some parts are bad...and some parts are really good. not only did they not fix the bad parts....they tore up the good parts to fix them...but havent touched them for like a week after tearing that piece of road apart. now my entire commute is full of bumpy roads. these people have no common sense

 

[Thump553]

I've never been able to figure that out about chip seal-why they always seem to pick the roads that don't need to be worked on.

 

[Thegonagle]

Install mud flaps, and buy a car bra to use until they sweep up the excess (1-2 weeks max). Otherwise, shaddap! It sucks for a week or two, but the chip seal prolongs the life of the road and improves safety in wet or snowy weather. The normal procedure when they rebuild any low to medium traffic road in my area (hot summers and snowy winters--sound like Colorado?) seems to be exactly like what they did in your area: Lay down new black-top, leave it for 1-2 years, then chip-seal, and repeat the chip-seal every 2-5 years thereafter, depending on traffic volume. Low-volume roads last 20 or more years with regular chip-sealing and only minor repairs. It's cost-effective, and that's a very good thing.

 

[fs5]

find a carpool / trade cars with a friend who has a crappy car for a while

 

[yukichigai]

Originally posted by: Thump553
I've never been able to figure that out about chip seal-why they always seem to pick the roads that don't need to be worked on.

I'm not an asphault specialist, but I do work with them. That being said I think this is right....

Chip-sealing is the last phase in making a good, solid road. The first layer is usually some sort of foundation, like concrete or perhaps more asphault, then on top of that is the "plantmix butiminous surface", a.k.a. asphault. On top of that is the chipseal. The chipseal is done to slow down the wearing process on the road, so that maintenance has to be done less often. It also makes the road smoother.

Why'd they wait until 2 years after paving the road? Could be for several reasons, likely something to do with the climate. The last thing you want to do is chipseal a road, then have the asphault underneath crack because of temperature change. Also, depending on the specific mix of asphault used (there are several formulations for different climates/states/road types/etc.) it may have to set for a few years prior.

The other option is that they're using a new untested formulation of asphault and their prior test section showed some sort of degredation in quality over time that required a chipseal to fix. Not every road is chipsealed.


Again, not an asphault specialist. If you want I could go ask one though.

 

[djheater]

Originally posted by: Citrix
Colorado DOT just started to chip seal the road i drive to work on. so now i have 20 miles of gravel to drive on. This pisses me off. there was absoutly nothing wrong with the road. the asphalt was only 2 years old after they rototilled it and layed down new blacktop. It was super smooth to drive on, no cracks, potholes at all. I sent a bitch letter to CDOT wanting to know why that just F*cked up a perfectly good road where there are many around here that needed the attention. Its just a matter of time before my windshield is cracked and the front end of new camry gets all chipped.

I can not take another road into work, if i do its a 50 mile detour. Some may say slow down and not follow too close. well i do that and have, but i cant control the asshats who are on the oncoming lane and are riding the center line where the loose gravel is and spraying the crap all over the place. it sounds like a shotgun blast just hit my car. :| :|

For those of you who dont know what chip seal road work is where they spray the road with liquid asphalt then use a spreader and spread about 1 inch of 16mm gravel over the hot liquid asphalt then use steamrollers to press the rock down.

This is a reson I take no great pride in the aesthetics of my car, and why it's highly unlikely I'll ever see a reason to buy new.

Cars will get fvcked up eventually, why worry about it?

Just my opinion. I'm not arguing against it, I just seem to fail at a personal level to understand it.

 

[OutHouse]

Originally posted by: Thegonagle
Install mud flaps, and buy a car bra to use until they sweep up the excess (1-2 weeks max). Otherwise, shaddap! It sucks for a week or two, but the chip seal prolongs the life of the road and improves safety in wet or snowy weather. The normal procedure when they rebuild any low to medium traffic road in my area (hot summers and snowy winters--sound like Colorado?) seems to be exactly like what they did in your area: Lay down new black-top, leave it for 1-2 years, then chip-seal, and repeat the chip-seal every 2-5 years thereafter, depending on traffic volume. Low-volume roads last 20 or more years with regular chip-sealing and only minor repairs. It's cost-effective, and that's a very good thing.

Cost effective my ass. the last time i saw this done I was living in North Dakota. They layed all the crap down and guess what.. after the first winter, the snow plows had scraped every single bit of it off the blacktop. The same thing is going to happen here.

Its a waste of, time, tax payers money, resources and causes unjustified damage to vehicles.

 

[gopunk]

Originally posted by: djheater

Originally posted by: Citrix
Colorado DOT just started to chip seal the road i drive to work on. so now i have 20 miles of gravel to drive on. This pisses me off. there was absoutly nothing wrong with the road. the asphalt was only 2 years old after they rototilled it and layed down new blacktop. It was super smooth to drive on, no cracks, potholes at all. I sent a bitch letter to CDOT wanting to know why that just F*cked up a perfectly good road where there are many around here that needed the attention. Its just a matter of time before my windshield is cracked and the front end of new camry gets all chipped.

I can not take another road into work, if i do its a 50 mile detour. Some may say slow down and not follow too close. well i do that and have, but i cant control the asshats who are on the oncoming lane and are riding the center line where the loose gravel is and spraying the crap all over the place. it sounds like a shotgun blast just hit my car. :| :|

For those of you who dont know what chip seal road work is where they spray the road with liquid asphalt then use a spreader and spread about 1 inch of 16mm gravel over the hot liquid asphalt then use steamrollers to press the rock down.

This is a reson I take no great pride in the aesthetics of my car, and why it's highly unlikely I'll ever see a reason to buy new.

Cars will get fvcked up eventually, why worry about it?

Just my opinion. I'm not arguing against it, I just seem to fail at a personal level to understand it.

well everything gets f*cked up eventually, but you can still take pride in it while it lasts.

 

[djheater]

Originally posted by: gopunk

Originally posted by: djheater

Originally posted by: Citrix
Colorado DOT just started to chip seal the road i drive to work on. so now i have 20 miles of gravel to drive on. This pisses me off. there was absoutly nothing wrong with the road. the asphalt was only 2 years old after they rototilled it and layed down new blacktop. It was super smooth to drive on, no cracks, potholes at all. I sent a bitch letter to CDOT wanting to know why that just F*cked up a perfectly good road where there are many around here that needed the attention. Its just a matter of time before my windshield is cracked and the front end of new camry gets all chipped.

I can not take another road into work, if i do its a 50 mile detour. Some may say slow down and not follow too close. well i do that and have, but i cant control the asshats who are on the oncoming lane and are riding the center line where the loose gravel is and spraying the crap all over the place. it sounds like a shotgun blast just hit my car. :| :|

For those of you who dont know what chip seal road work is where they spray the road with liquid asphalt then use a spreader and spread about 1 inch of 16mm gravel over the hot liquid asphalt then use steamrollers to press the rock down.

This is a reson I take no great pride in the aesthetics of my car, and why it's highly unlikely I'll ever see a reason to buy new.

Cars will get fvcked up eventually, why worry about it?

Just my opinion. I'm not arguing against it, I just seem to fail at a personal level to understand it.

well everything gets f*cked up eventually, but you can still take pride in it while it lasts.

It's not an anti-materialist statement. It's just cars that I don't see a great reason to get excited by. I find there to be little reason for one car to be so significantly more expensive than another when they both accomplish the same basic task. I like luxury items as much as the next guy and I can APPRECIATE a very comfortable or powerful car, but I see no reason to own one for myself.

At any rate it was not my intention to generalise.

 

[gistech1978]

it does get better as it gets matted down by traffic.
but i agree it still sucks.

 

[Thegonagle]

Originally posted by: Citrix
Cost effective my ass. the last time i saw this done I was living in North Dakota. They layed all the crap down and guess what.. after the first winter, the snow plows had scraped every single bit of it off the blacktop. The same thing is going to happen here.

Its a waste of, time, tax payers money, resources and causes unjustified damage to vehicles.

If it all got scraped off, then they were doing something wrong, because I've never seen that happen here.

I'm no specialist either, but I'd guess either they seal-coated too late in the season, and it didn't set properly before the snow plows hit, or (probably more likely) they were using some inadequate "lowest-bidder" sealant that couldn't adhere properly. (That was a waste.)

I just don't see preventative maintenance as wasteful.

 

[OutHouse]

^ because im bored.

 

[Tal]

They just did that to the road out in front of my house. Kinda seems lame. Never seen it done before. Made it harder to push the stroller tonight when we went for a walk.