Repairs in Review
A collection of concrete repair articles highlight some of the industry's popular techniques and products.
The completion of the sidewalk repairs was so successful that the project was expanded to include the island areas and curbs. By the end of the project, DSM Concrete resurfaced 90,000 square feet at the San Francisco airport.
Speed is critical on repairs at the Nassau Expressway
The Nassau Expressway serves as a major artery leading to JFK International Airport outside of New York, N.Y. Approximately 40 years old, the roadway has seen increased traffic demands since its inception and recently underwent extensive repairs to several miles of its concrete pavement.
The New York DOT contracted Tully Construction, Flushing, N.Y., to perform both partial-depth concrete patching and full-depth repairs along three miles of the roadway. Because the Nassau Expressway is such a heavily used roadway, the New York DOT required repairs be done at night, between 9 p.m. and 6 a.m., with only minimal road closures. Tully devised a closure strategy and safety plan that allowed traffic to flow adjacent to the lanes being repaired.
Tully Construction performed the partial-depth patching with ProSpec Premium Patch 200. Mixed with 38-inch stone, the fast-setting, rapid strength gain repair product can be opened up to traffic in one to two hours. The Tully crews mixed the material on demand with a mobile mixer, which kept aggregate, water and patch materials separate until the mix was needed. The working time of the field mixed concrete is approximately 20 minutes.
DOT inspectors identified and marked the areas that required patching. Tully saw cut a rectangular perimeter around each area and removed the unsound concrete using lightweight pneumatic hammers. The Tully crews placed the mix directly from the mobile mix machine onto the roadway.
ProSpec Premium Patch 200 requires minimal finishing and texturing work. On the Nassau Expressway project, the material set in about 30 minutes, and crews were able to open up the repair area to traffic after about an hour. Tully used 2,500-pound super sacks of the patching material, purchased through construction materials supplier Axela Services, LLC. In all, about 7,000 square feet of pavement was repaired.
Other sections of the Nassau Expressway were in need of repairs beyond partial-depth patching. Those areas received full-depth repair with Super-Slab precast concrete panels by The Fort Miller Co., Inc. The Super-Slab is a precast slab-on-grade system for highway, exit ramp, airport pavement and other roadway replacement. The slabs are crane set, and adjacent panels are connected with load transfer dowels.
“The advantage of this system is speed,” says Joe Rizzo, Northeast district sales manager with ProSpec. “They can perform full-width, full-depth repairs with nighttime closures instead of months behind barriers and the time it takes to pave. And they can open the road to traffic the next day.”
The placement of the Super-Slab precast concrete panels required the Tully crews to take down the existing road to the subbase. Crushed stone aggregate was placed and graded and the panels lowered on top. ProSpec’s Slab Dowel Grout was used to fill in around the load transfer dowel slots and also to fill in any voids between panels and existing pavement.
Throughout the Nassau Expressway project, Tully crews placed 1,500 Super-Slab panels. Fourteen trucks of Slab Dowel Grout were placed using a Machine Technologies automatic water feed mixing pump.
Repair of Route 66
U.S. Route 66 — the “Main Street of America,” as it is known to many — dates to 1926 and is a quintessential American icon. But, even landmarks such as the “Mother Road” need to be repaired every so often to keep them up and running for another generation.
So, city officials in Winslow — the city made famous by The Eagles’ 1972 hit song “Take It Easy” — selected Phoenix-based dbA Construction to repair this famed federal highway. The 2009 project comprised of a full-depth and partial-depth repair of a 12-block section in downtown Winslow. In total, dbA Construction used 8,610 70-pound bags of QUIKRETE FastSet Concrete Mix for the project.
