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Blount Construction Co., based in Marietta, GA, is leading the way for GDOT by providing the road agency an alternative to conventional reconstruction, thereby maximizing their road improvement budget with FDR. The reclamation process not only improves the safety and performance of distressed asphalt roads, but does so at about one third to one half of the cost of conventional reconstruction. Further, the entire process can be completed in a tenth of the time of conventional construction, thereby allowing the asphalt paving contractor more time to focus on what they do best, lay hot-mix asphalt.

In Jackson County, north of Atlanta, the asphalt recycling specialist recently completed reclaiming a severely distressed 1.7-mile stretch of Wayne Poultry Road through a process that blends a stabilization additive with the existing pavement and the underlying base material. While bituminous and/or chemical products can be used in the FDR process, in this case GDOT selected Portland cement based on their laboratory mix design process.

"This is the second year that GDOT has been specifying FDR stabilization to improve county and city roads with the intent to make them wider, safer and stronger at a cost that's well below conventional reconstruction," notes Blair Barnhardt, operations engineer for Blount's Reclamation Division. Counties such as Jackson look to the State DOT for State Aid financial support for their roadwork, hence the GDOT involvement.

Barnhardt comments, "While we're excited to see southeastern states such as Georgia implement 'new technology,' some western states such as Nevada DOT, have been recycling their distressed roads for over 20 years and saved over $600 million in that time."

Project Manager David Faust states, "On this particular project we estimated the rehabilitation of 22,000 square yards 8 inches deep. As with most distressed county roads in Georgia, we figured on their being a couple of inches of asphalt on a mixture of granular aggregate base (GAB) and underlying soil. On a typical road reclamation project that may be three miles in length, we can complete the project in less than three weeks including FDR and a 2-inch asphalt overlay. A conventional reconstruction approach of removing the old asphalt and a portion of the underlying base and replacing it could take over 6 months to complete and cost two to three times as much."