Pavement Preservation Journal, Spring 2015, Vol. 8, No. 1
By Tom Kuennen
Attendees of the 2014 International & Western States In-Place Recycling Conference held August 5-7 in Denver had a unique opportunity to see an actual hot in-place recycling (HIR) project in Fort Collins, Colo., in an up-close and personal manner on the conference field trip.
On Wednesday, Aug. 6, all 176 participants – including engineers from 18 state DOTs – boarded three buses bound for Fort Collins to get hands-on experience inspecting an actual single-machine HIR project being performed by Cutler Repaving, Inc. of Lawrence, Kan., on West Stuart Street between South Shields and South Taft.
After the HIR demo, field trip participants viewed cold mix recycling of reclaimed asphalt pavement (RAP) by the Coughlin Company, Inc., of St. George, Utah, at a central plant located at a Colorado DOT equipment yard (see preceding article).
In the HIR process as executed by the contractor, the single-machine repaver heats and scarifies the existing pavement, applies recycling agent to the resulting RAP, places a leveling course of the 100 percent recycled RAP, and then immediately places a virgin hot mix asphalt overlay, all in one pass.
“The HIR process offers us the unique ability to treat roadways that are too deteriorated for a surface treatment, and not far enough gone for a mill and fill or a reconstruct,” said Bennett Ashbaugh, project engineer for Fort Collins. “We can prolong the lives of these roadways at a lower cost, maximizing the number of roadways we can treat each year.”
