When you see a line of cones ahead it usually indicates that asphalt is being laid on the road. As you drive by and observe the Asphalt Paving in Minneapolis process it appears to be very simple. To the untrained eye, trucks full of hot asphalt deliver their loads to the site where the hot asphalt is loaded into paving machines that lay the asphalt down in a smooth layer and then rollers and compactors run over it until it is the right density.
If this is what you think you are correct, but long before the trucks show up the magic of asphalt is happening elsewhere. The material used in Asphalt Paving Minneapolis is bitumen, the sticky black material which is found in crude oil and an aggregate, normally crushed rock. The process starts in the quarry where heavy boulders that have been blasted from walls of rock are taken first to a primary crusher that begins the process of breaking the large rocks down. The primary crushed rock is transported to a storage pile where it awaits another trip by conveyor to the screening tower where it bounces over a set of screens with holes of the required size. The rocks which are too big to fall through the holes are sent to a secondary crusher where it is processed again. Eventually the stone has been crushed to the sizes necessary for use in the asphalt mix.
The aggregate is usually made up of a certain percentage of sand, stone dust, small rock of perhaps ¼” and rock of approximately ½”. The aggregate mixture is made on a moving conveyor and it represents about 95% of the finished product by weight. The final preparation of the aggregate is to run it through a dryer which removes all traces of moisture. The dry mixture is then mixed with hot bitumen at about 300 degrees and within a matter of seconds; the Asphalt Paving Minneapolis is ready for delivery to the site.
As the asphalt hardens in about an hour, the preparation plant is usually close to the site, especially when the volume of asphalt is great.
Asphalt Paving in Minneapolis is used over a prepared bed when making a road and is the final coat. The road bed has been prepared to a certain specification depending on the intended use. The road bed of a city street is different than that of an Interstate highway which is different again from an airport runway. The common denominator is that they all get an asphalt overlay.
Asphalt roads are widely used as they are easily repaired whereas concrete road surfaces are more difficult and time consuming to repair. At times, heavy use applications will have both a concrete base and then an Asphalt Paving Minneapolis overlay.
The entire process requires skill, knowledge and speed to do correctly.
Classic 360 is a company which has been successfully laying asphalt surfaces for over 20 years. They are now expanding their areas of expertise to include seal coating, paver brick, pipe and concrete.