TOPICS
Surface
Dressing
Setting the Record
Straight
Problems
with the Site
Motto
of the Month
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Introduction
I have only been publishing this website for
eighteen months but it is sad to say I have seen quite a
change in the openness of some of the sites that I used
to regularly access.
I now find that many of the sites I frequently accessed
twelve to eighteen months ago quite "freely"
now have rather onerous registering processes which seem
to want to know everything about you and your employer,
and if you do not fill in all the boxes they throw out
you registration.
"They" tell you your data is quite safe and
they only want it for their records and it will not be
disclosed to any third parties, in that case it seems a
pretty pointless exercise to me , but in any case I will
decline to use the facilities these sites offer, for one
reason I am not sure my employer would like his details
entered in a database he was unaware of.
I will continue to search for, appreciate and link to the
sites which are quite happy to inform and educate while
at the same time telling of their own products and
services.
These "open" sites must be pretty confident in
what they offer to have such a good approach to improving
the knowledge of those in the industry.
I mention this because I will slowly be removing links
included in my links page that require overly inquisitive
registering to access them, you may wish to independently
bookmark these sites or in some other way make a note of
them because you will not be able to access them from my
site for much longer.
Surface Dressing
We are already only ten weeks away from the start of the
surface dressing season so I hope you have all got your
surface dressing contracts completed and sent out to the
contractors, on your tender lists, for pricing.
Those authorities and consultants who tarry may well get
the less able contractors to do their work, or their
dressings undertaken at the less favorable times of the
year, or at inflated prices.
For those of you new to surface dressing you might find
the page basic
information on surface dressing on this website a useful place to
start, because as well as supplying you with the basics
it lists a number of other sources of information on the
subject which you will find rewarding.
The Road Surface Dressing Association (RSDA) have their
own website at, www.rsda-gb.co.uk/I found the site nicely
presented but there was not a lot of specific information
on it, but you are able to order the various technical
publications that RSDA produce, they are not expensive
and, I believe they are well worth having.
I will be quite open about the fact I am a keen supporter
of the surface dressing process in its basic form,
providing its design and application are correctly
carried out. This process is a most cost effective option
for sealing and extending the life of a sound but
oxidising road surface, as well as providing excellent
skid resistance.
(I am not too
sure about the double and triple dressings, the prices
for these dressings are approaching the price of a 10mm.
close graded macadam surfacing, so it is up to your local
engineers to make the correct judgments.)
As always I am going to encourage thorough
"client" supervision of the surface dressing
contractor to ensure the correct testing and sampling is
carried out.
I really do not like "bits of paper" that tell
you how wonderful a contractor is, I have always found
they are a lot "more wonderful" with good
supervision, and the amount of money you spend on the
supervision compared to the cost of your surface dressing
is tiny.
One last point, surface dressing is coming in for
criticism as a noisy surface, and with the bolder 14mm.
dressings this may be a fair observation, but I am a firm
believer that safety comes before a slight decrease in
noise levels.
It is also a fact that a lot of the surfaces we are now
dressing are a lot harder (with harder grades of bitumen)
than surfacing materials of some years ago, and you may
find the bolder dressings are not always required.
And did you know that some "reports" regard a
6mm. dressing as a "quiet surface".
Setting
the Record Straight
In
the "NEW CIVIL ENGINEER" of the 7th. of
February 2002 there is an article relating to the dry
skid properties of stone mastic asphalt (SMA).
In the article there are three small pictures of SMA
which have been taken from this site without my
permission, which is a little naughty.
In fact I am not too worried about having photographs
taken from my site, indeed how do you stop it, it is a
real world, but it is nice to be asked. and the source of
the photographs acknowledged.
However I am more than a little concerned how my
photographs are used, and in this instance I would have
declined their use.
Anybody who visits the site regularly may well recognise
the source of the photographs in the article and think I
contributed to, or supported the views inferred in the
article, I do not.
In my opinion (and I am as much in the dark as the rest
of you on the details of the Derbyshire situation) there
is just not enough information revealed to make sweeping
statements that all SMA's have a reduced skid resistance
in their early life.
I can say that the organisation I work for have been
using SMA's, in various forms, since 1992 and I am not
aware of any accidents relating to the lack of skid
resistance during their early life.
Indeed, the police themselves, who flagged up the concern
on these particular sites are reported to have said that
the accidents were not as a result of the road surface
characteristics.
So, let us be sensible about this, be cautious by all
means, but let us wait until the Materials
Engineers have done their work and the full facts of the
particular bituminous mixtures involved and the
conditions of their laying can be published and studied.
While you wait you may like to gain a little more
knowledge about SMA's by reading the page on Bituminous Mixtures and the TRL Reports and
further links it suggests.
You may also find it useful to learn about the Pavement
Friction Tester, the apparatus used to perform the
friction testing in Derbyshire. by purchasing a copy of
:-
TRL Report 367 : High and low speed
skidding resistance : the influence of texture,
this is a most
interesting report.
Problems with the
Site
I
must apologise if some of you are experiencing problems
accessing my website or experiencing very slow download
times.
This is because my Internet Service Provider (ISP) is in
the process of updating his servers and is slowly moving
websites from old to new servers, at least this is what I
am being told, and this process is causing a few
problems, (like my counters keep resetting themselves).
I have been very satisfied with the level of service and
support I have received up to now so I will give them the
benefit of the doubt for a while, once again apologies
for any inconvenience caused.
I hope it will not put you off visiting the
site.
Motto of the Month
"Doing
business without advertising is like winking at a girl in
the dark, you know what you are doing, but nobody else
does"
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