What Goes Into Repaving a Road?
When a road or parking lot is repaved, a layer is taken off the top and then replaced with a newer one. This process involves a lot of hard work and specialty equipment, but most people are not aware that there are three distinct steps with different purposes that go into it.
Milling
The first step is milling. When you hire a milling and reclamation Brookhaven NY company for your parking lot, you can opt for the milling service which takes a couple of inches off the top and for resurfacing, or the reclamation service, which digs up the space completely for a deeper repair. Milling machines can take up to two inches of asphalt off a surface in one pass. For deeper potholes or to fix leveling issues, pneumatic pavement breakers can be used to break off large chunks of asphalt down to the dirt foundations of the lot.
Recycling
Many milling machines will break up the layers they pull off into sizes suitable for repaving which can be processed onsite while reclamation usually has pieces too large for this service. Much of the roadways and parking lots repaired each year incorporate recycled asphalt.
Repaving
Repaving is done with machines that lay the hot asphalt mixture and compact it into a hard surface as it cools. If you are completely replacing your lot, this process requires a subsurface that has been leveled, covered with a layer of crushed rock and leveled again. For a milled surface, the new asphalt layer can be added directly and sometimes by the same machine.
Having your parking lot resurfaced or replaced is a time and labor-intensive process that requires specialty equipment. Many business owners will have a parking lot maintenance company come in a couple of times a year to clean and inspect the surface for needed repairs. This can be as easy as milling a couple of inches from the top or as complicated as tearing it all up and building a new one.
