Keeping Las Vegas Roads in Pristine Shape

In 2008, Eric M. Reimschiissel, manager of the Pavement Maintenance Division of the American Asphalt & Grading Co., completed the largest slurry seal project for the City of Las Vegas, and as far as Reimschiissel knows, maybe the largest slurry seal project ever bid in the country.

During the spring and fall road maintenance schedule established by the Las Vegas Public Works Department, one of Reimschiissel's crews placed 3,867,044 square yards of slurry seal to complete the $3.5 million project.

The 13- to 14-member crew operated three self-contained truck-mounted Valley Slurry Seal Macropavers that traveled from staging areas to the projects, where they were then attached to a spreader box to apply the specified Type 1 or Type 2 slurry.

"It really worked out well having the three units shuttle back and forth to the staging areas where we could load them with materials," Reimschiissel says. "We had eight stockpile staging areas for this project and when one of the pavers mixed and emptied its load in the slurry box, another was ready to be hooked up and continue spreading the slurry."

As a past president and Slurry Seal Workshop Committee chairman of the International Slurry Surfacing Association, Reimschiissel has been active in the slurry seal industry for 30 years, providing industry guidance on applications and specifications in several states. He has also been promoting the use of slurry seals and pavement preservation for three decades.

When Reimschiissel launched the maintenance division for American Asphalt in 2001, he had one sealcoat crew and one slurry crew. Today, the division employs 75 associates working in California, Nevada, Utah, and Arizona, providing slurry seal, sealcoating, crack sealing, asphalt paving/patching, and pavement marking and striping.

He operates two paving/patching crews, two slurry seal crews, three to four sealcoat crews that apply the company's proprietary AMERICOAT mineral fill emulsion, one crack seal crew and one striping crew.

Project slurry placement

Reimschiissel's slurry seal crews place Type 1 (1/8-in. aggregate, used for low wear traffic areas), Type 2 (1/4-in. aggregate, used for most roadways) and Type 3 (3/8-in. aggregate, used for severe surface defects) surface preservation treatments.

On the recent Las Vegas projects, crews placed Type 1 and Type 2 slurry seal mixes primarily on residential and some downtown business streets. It was not uncommon for the one slurry seal crew to complete 10 to 20 streets a day, laying 35,000 to 40,000 square yards of material.

The contract required an average daily application rate of 25,000 to 40,000 square yards. Reimschiissel says production during the 10- to 12-hour days did run as high as 50,000 to 55,000 square yards with a daily high of 65,000 square yards. Type 1 slurry was placed at 10 to 13 pounds of aggregate per square yard, while the Type 2 application was placed at 13 to 20 pounds of aggregate per square yard.

The slurry seal used on this project contained a latex modified cationic quick setting asphalt emulsion with a one-hour set time. That means roads had to be open to traffic one hour after application, without the occurrence of bleeding, raveling, separation or other distresses.

Full curing of the seal occurred within 24 hours. An aluminum sulfate set control additive was used in the slurry mix design. Reimschiissel's slurry seal crew had to deliver a homogeneous mat that was firmly adhered to the cleaned and prepared road surface, and the finished coat had to provide a friction resistant surface texture throughout its service life.

His crews are productive - they need to be with the demanding schedules their road agencies place on them; and when it comes to customers like the City of Las Vegas, neatness is as important as meeting completion deadlines. Road agencies and commercial customers have high expectations of maintaining a well-groomed appearance. Remember, we're talking about Vegas, and Vegas is all about the show.