This street maintenance technique involves applying hot liquid asphalt to a street surface and covering the street with a graded aggregate to produce a waterproof membrane.
During the summer months, several weeks before seal coating begins, the City's street maintenance division will work in the area to prep the streets, which can include pothole patching and/or some skim paving, which is putting down a thin layer of asphalt to patch a larger area of the street.
There are several steps to seal coating:
- First, the street surface is swept clean of all loose pavement and dust.
- Next, the surface of the asphalt is completely covered with a layer of liquid asphalt using a tank truck called a distributor.
- Afterwards, a layer of gravel is placed over the liquid asphalt with a machine called a chip spreader.
- Torpedo gravel (egg shaped) or crushed granite gravel chips are then worked into the asphalt with a rubber tire roller.
- Traffic is allowed back on the street within several minutes of placing and compacting the gravel, as the weight of vehicles helps to work the gravel into the soft asphalt.
- Finally, the streets are swept to pick up any loose gravel.
- Recovered gravel is screened and re-used for the next seal coating project.