AsphaltPro magazine, within its PreservationPro supplement and Pavement Maintenance column, offers pavement maintenance and preservation tips throughout the year. Our staff often finds the advice for filling cracks to be repetitive. Everyone out there in the field typically does the same stuff to fill cracks.
But here’s something that might be different for your crew to help you get quality results. Bring a tape measure in addition to your measuring wheel when estimating the project so you can assess the width and depth of cracks. Use the cracks’ measurements to decide not only what method you’ll use to fix them (I’m talking cleaning & filling versus routing & filling versus saw-cut & patch), but also what material you’ll use to fix them.
Rick Stone of Maxwell Products Inc. is a big proponent of using hot pour mastics to fill large cracks. He advises these sealants can return structural integrity to the void they’re filling. So, if you have a transverse crack that’s more than ¾ of an inch wide and deeper than 1 inch, you may elect to use a hot pour mastic to fill it.
Check out the article below, based upon his presentation at the 2023 National Pavement Expo, and completed with his assistance. He explains in depth some ways to fill small and large cracks with various materials.
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