The Patch

What we wanted to do was maintain the asphalt roadway of “X” Street, especially in front of Councillor “Y”s home. The City engineer thought this would be a good and proper way to keep the heat off while the department attended to other budgetary matters. The instructions, valid until the next municipal election, were to make certain that there were no potholes on X Street. Councillor Y sits on the budget committee.

X Street had been resurfaced six years ago and was now approaching that delicate age when wrinkles and cracks begin to appear. By paying close attention to these aging signs, it is possible to extend the life of asphalt roadways by several years. Water is the enemy of asphalt. In these northern climes, water seeping into asphalt through miniscule cracks will freeze in the winter. Freezing water has amazing force, moving the asphalt either upwards or away from the crack. When the ice melts, it leaves a void, into which the bordering asphalt crumbles. What we intended to do was seal the cracks before they grew to a size that would in a few months, lead to a pothole.

We did not want potholes on X Street.

Our supervisor made daily trips along X Street, watching for cracks. In August, the first crack appeared, snaking its way across half of the street, and unfortunately for us, immediately in front of the good Councillor’s house. There was a hint of panic in his voice as he radioed the shop, calling for the crack-sealing unit. The recent rains had eaten away at the crack, unseen until a dangerous dandelion had sprouted right in the middle of the right lane. Armed with an air pressure unit to cleanse the crack of any debris and dandelion offspring, and towing the hot crack sealer unit, we rushed with orange roof light flashing to X Street.

We cleansed the small crack and applied the hot, fibre-reinforced synthetic rubber compound into the small crack. Alas, we noticed that the pavement at that particular spot was slightly depressed, perhaps from the good Councillor parking the heavy SUV on the street. If water gathered in this spot, it would easily find its way into the barely discernable microscopic cracks. It might seem inappropriate to add a levelling patch at this time so we moved on to more serious work on Front Street as soon as the crack sealer cooled.

By the end of September, the area in front of the unnamed house had developed a deadly area of alligatoring – a series of small connected cracks that will inevitably lead to a pothole. Alligatoring, or ravelling, tells us that there is an underlying problem – that the asphalt is crumbling from below. The only solution is to cut away the damaged asphalt and apply a patch, at the same time levelling the infected area for proper drainage. We had to close one lane of traffic and have flag persons direct traffic while we broke away the area around the cracked area. There was no shovel-leaning while we waited for the load of hot patch since we saw the curtains move in the window of Y’s house. We added a little extra toluene surfactant and black dye in the hope that this would bind the patch and be an example of our good work. We compacted the area as best we could, however the shoulder of the street had dropped a little over the years and the sides of the roadway were beginning to show signs of slippage – that beginning of the end for a roadway.

The fates must have been against us. The earth is slowly rising in our area, a result of the last ice age when the weight of tonnes of ice compressed the earth’s surface. The water main, now some thirty years old, moved with the earth until the day in October when the stress broke the pipe. Our confreres in the water department tore up the street, fixed the pipe and then called us to resurface the cut, now a rough gravel area some twenty feet wide across both lanes of the road. With winter and frost only days away our supervisor gambled on doing a hot patch even though the earth around the repair had perhaps not yet settled. We cut back the edges of the crudely cut asphalt that the water department had left us, and carefully scraped the edges so the new asphalt would adhere to the old.

On a day when the temperature was only slightly above the minimum required for hot-patching, we began the work. Councillor Y was at home and came outdoors to watch our work, spurring us on to make the repair in record time, albeit perhaps we rushed the compacting of the base layer of crushed gravel as we attempted to level the subsurface for proper drainage. The supervisor explained that we were applying a layer of non-polymerized thermoplastic bituminous concrete that would bind securely to the old roadway and provide many years of service. Privately we knew that this patch, if the temperature had been a little higher, would outlast the rest of X Street.

Little did we know that the very next day several heavy cement mixer trucks would pass over our fresh patch on their way to a new housing development on two previously vacant lots. It was with some distress that our supervisor reported to us that the patch had suffered from compression and would not likely survive the winter. Then, in December, after two weeks of frost, we had a thaw, two days of frost and then yet another warm day. We knew our patch was doomed.

In January, just as the Roads budget came before council, we received a call about a pothole in X Street. We used the steam Jenny to heat the area around the hole, blew it as dry as we could with air and applied cold mix to the small twenty centimetre round hole. We backed the truck over the patch several times, however we knew deep in our hearts that it would not last. By the first week in April, we had patched the pothole, now thirty centimetres wide, three times. The entire patch seemed to be alligatoring so we planned to replace the whole area at first chance.

Several other small holes were appearing on X Street and it was becoming too obvious that we were paying so much attention to the Councillor’s street. Our supervisor received a telephone call one evening asking us to treat the street like any other. No more crack sealing until the cracks were at least 2 centimetres wide (when it is too late); no more special treatment to stop the alligatoring along the edge of the roads; no extra wide patches over utility cuts.

All we wanted to do was maintain X Street in top condition as an example of how we could care for a roadway. The good news for the people on X Street is that their street is now in the five-year capital forecast for a complete resurfacing. It is fortunate for us that some of the top movers and shakers in our city live out of town. We can only spend so much time patching potholes on every X Street.