What Equipment To Expect When Booking An Asphalt Paving Project.

Asphalt pavement installation is an intensive project. As paving season resumes in much of Texas, including Midland, the season will be a busy one as everyone clamors to get their pavement project booked.

Suppose you are a recent facility manager at a parking lot franchise & need a new lot paved or remediated, but you’re clueless. In that case, Straight Edge Contractors will teach you what paving equipment is used in creating the iconic blacktop in the order they are applied!

Milling Machines

With the initialization of your paving or overlay project, the contractor will bring out the millers. It’s a piece of heavy-duty equipment on which a rotating drum fitted with blades is mounted. The machine can be adjusted to remove the top layer of the damaged asphalt or even remove the pavement to full depth. The milled asphalt is usually sucked up by a vacuum onto a Conveyor belt & collected. Water or some form of coolant is applied to the drum to dissipate the heat as the miller works. The milled asphalt can be reused in the current project or recycled later.

Street Sweepers

After the required asphalt patch has been milled off, street sweepers get to work. The rotating brushes dust off any excess asphalt from the milled surface to ensure a smooth & level foundation for the paving stage of the project. Leaving this step could make the new road too uneven and prone to damage sooner.

Dump Trucks

Trucking is a central part of paving asphalt. Contractors may use different dump trucks to transport the prepared asphalt from the mixing plant to the required site. The bottom dump truck releases its load from underneath the vehicle, made easier by the sloped walls of the container. The end dump releases the load by using hydraulics to lift the front end of the dumper, sliding the asphalt through a tailgate. The live bottom dump is more sophisticated and comes with a built-in Conveyor belt to feed the asphalt right into the asphalt paver’s windrow-elevator (a feed system).

Asphalt Pavers

The show’s star, the asphalt paver, is a human-operated laydown machine fitted with a new, hot asphalt feed system and a floating screed adjusted for the asphalt layer to be deposited. To help you visualize: it is a tractor attached with a front hopper that feeds asphalt into the screed at the back of the heavy equipment. The screed is integral to the operation of the paver as it not only levels the asphalt being deposited but compresses it, giving it form before the next stage occurs.

Asphalt Roller Compactors

The steel drum roller is also called a vibratory compactor, and it has basalt-filled drums for tires. As the asphalt exits the screed, the compactors follow, compacting the surface. At the proper temperature range, asphalt compaction results in a satisfactorily cured asphalt surface. The pneumatic compactors follow behind the rollers for a refined finish. The job is done!

Depending on the scale of the job, intensive equipment like the one mentioned above is a must, but smaller projects can make do with shoveling & troweling asphalt over a milled patch, then compacted with plates or a roller.

Straight Edge Contractors covers any scale of asphalt paving, which makes us an ideal & feasible choice for your parking lots! We are successfully operating in Midland, TX, so get in touch and receive a free estimate on your asphalt paving project.

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