Post by papaof2 on Nov 10, 2023 1:11:27 GMT -6
They do keep things in repair, but you might appreciate a blow-by-blow account of watching and listening to less than a quarter mile of paving work...
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Well, I can hear and feel that the road paving crew is here. They're using a Roadtec RX-600 road planer to take down the most recent layer of asphalt paving by maybe 2 inches before putting down the new layer of asphalt (I don't plan to walk through that dust to measure the depth or the width of the cut :-(
Take a look at the machine and see whether you would call it a road-gator ;-) However, it's an alien creature because it takes pavement in through its gut, digests the pieces and spits the grit out after it travels through its long neck ;-)
www.astecindustries.com/products/details/roadtec-rx-600-cold-planer
From that page:
THE RX-600 IS A 675 HORSEPOWER COLD PLANER AVAILABLE WITH 4-TRACK ASSEMBLIES OR OPTIONAL 3-TRACK ASSEMBLIES.
The one they're using has 4 track assemblies.
At the rate they're moving, I'm not sure if the better half will be able to get out to her appointment with the therapist (she needs to leave in about an hour) unless maybe I drive the truck across the yard to access the road where there is neither construction equipment nor dump truck blocking access to the road (my truck has 8+ inches of clearance so it can go out and in over the curb). They either expect the road-gator to eat up a lot of pavement very fast or the dump trucks have a long round trip to go dump their loads as they have five large trucks (possibly the largest road-legal dump beds available in a non-semi configuration) in line waiting to be filled.
I was awake most of the night with my back (So what else is new?) and it's not likely I'll be able to sleep with the road-gator shaking the house whenever it's within 150 feet. I'd guess the width it's cutting is 5 feet so maybe two passes for each lane - I'll know when they stop cutting on this section of road.
They clean up the remaining dust and small "stuff" with a powered brush vehicle (looks like something a Minion might drive in one of the "Despicable Me" movies) that brushes the loose stuff into the front loader bucket of a tractor with the vehicles running nose to nose: brush vehicle going forward, tractor going backward. Then the guys get out with the big backpack blowers to move the small stuff. There's a tanker truck parked up the road but I haven't seen the rear of it (I have no interest in walking through that grey/black cloud).
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They were almost at the driveway when they needed to swap dump trucks so - while they backed the next truck into place in front of the road-gator, I backed the better half's SUV out of the garage, across the double wide driveway and made a 3-point turn that left the SUV about a foot from the road and headed away from the truck so she just had to get in and reset the seat to head out in time for her appointment. This old guy may not look like much but he hasn't forgotten the lessons from days of towing a 17 foot pop-up camper and having to back it into the not-user-friendly spaces at some campgrounds - took us less than a minute from starting the engine to swapping drivers.
Guesstimate on amount of pavement being removed - a dump bed full every 150 feet of road.
The tanker has started delivering its liquid cargo - but do you think the propane tank on the side of the truck might be a clue? Hot liquid tar to stick today's layer of paving to the previous layer of paving. But that probably means I'll be out tomorrow with some tar remover to clean the sides of the SUV - depending on when the better half gets back :-(
However, it doesn't look as though the sprayers deliver an even pattern of tar so does that portend a shorter life for some portions of the new pavement?
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We have yet another vehicle in view - I think it might be the paver but I only saw it as it went around one of the dump trucks out front. I need a weatherproof pan/tilt/10x zoom IP camera on each corner of the house so I can follow vehicles as they move ;-) There is a vibrating roller (my grandfather called it a steam roller when I was a little kid) so they should be putting pavement down soon - - - and they are, just not in a place that I can see with a camera :-( There are three different "roller" vehicles: two with steel drum rollers and one with nine pneumatic tires (CAT CW16) - all of them are vibratory devices. The CAT CW16 can have up to 33,000lbs of ballast to flatten and smooth the pavement it's used on.
Two asphalt smoothing/finishing vehicles are parked in front of the house waiting for work 200+ feet away to be far enough along for those vehicles to be needed. The drivers don't care - they're paid by the hour.
=====
Someone slipped up on the scheduling of the hot mix asphalt trucks - the paver has been sitting in the same place for almost an hour and about a dozen people are idle. It's not time for lunch as there is no food or drink visible just folks sitting in the driver's seat of some piece of equipment or leaning on a shovel or broom.
I guess it's not important - it's just a little residential road with a few houses on it - and besides, it's all being paid for by the County Govt so it's not a big deal if they're idle...
=====
Things are back in action as a truck of asphalt finally arrived ;-) Two of the vibratory rollers are in use. One metal drum style on the straight sections and the pneumatic tire style at the corners here the paving is being blended to the as-yet-untouched road the road being paved tees into. When the metal drum roller is starting up or stopping, it goes through a range of vibration speeds and one of those is likely resonant with some part of every house... Just as well I decided not to try to sleep during the day today: the various noises - especially the asphalt trucks raising the bed to maximum dump and pulling forward to a quick stop several times to slam the tailgate and clear the asphalt from it would have made sleep difficult to impossible :-(
And shortly after they emptied that truck, two more arrived. Will they have enough to finish the area they planed with the road-gator? At the moment, I'd put that at maybe - but they do have an empty truck to send for another load while the two currently available loads are used.
=====
They're out of asphalt again. Care to guess where the paver is stopped? Dead center of our double driveway and blocking the full width of it. I expect the better half back in less than an hour so maybe they will get it moving before then. If not, I'll tell her to pull into the lower driveway and I'll take the SUV across the yard and do the turns needed to get it onto the driveway and in the garage. I had to do those things to get it out of the garage so I can do more of the same to get it back in place.
=====
The paver is moving and the better half hasn't yet called to say she's on the way home. They might get most of the paving done before she returns.
Maybe I was too optimistic - the paver moved about 6 - 8 feet and stopped. If they leave it where it is, she would have access to one side of the driveway. The downside is that the metal drum vibratory roller is going back and forth over that section of pavement and the range of vibrations during each start and stop are rattling things in the house... Another good reason for not trying to sleep today.
I'm wondering if the paver had "just enough" asphalt left in its hopper to pave that much more and they decided to clear the drive after blocking it for an hour? It's not worth the walk and being wrapped in the scent of hot asphalt to go find out.
=====
There's a truck moving outside. If I hear it backing up, it should be headed to the paver's hopper. I have to say someone is NOT competent to schedule this type work because they can't maintain an adequate flow of paving material. By my count, they wasted at least two hours waiting on "the next truck" (an hour each time) and there was nothing else for the crew to do but wait..
=====
They've finished today's paving as the tractor is using the frontloader bucket to get asphalt out of the paver's hopper for some fill in the curve at the intersection - the other lane from where they did fill earlier today.
The paver dumped the rest of the asphalt from its hopper and the frontloader is scooping it up. They needed maybe 10 minutes worth of material but had to wait an hour to get it. The manhole cover locations they did previously points to there being a LOT of paving to be done when they get back to this. I hope they do better with the scheduling of the asphalt deliveries or a lot of other people will get to experience their incompetence.
The big machines have been moved away so they're shutting down for today. What will the morrow bring? No idea - but there's at least a half mile of road with the old manhole covers located and new covers needing to be installed. So does that mean they dig up the new pavement to install the manhole covers at street level - the manhole cover they paved over today?
---
Well, I can hear and feel that the road paving crew is here. They're using a Roadtec RX-600 road planer to take down the most recent layer of asphalt paving by maybe 2 inches before putting down the new layer of asphalt (I don't plan to walk through that dust to measure the depth or the width of the cut :-(
Take a look at the machine and see whether you would call it a road-gator ;-) However, it's an alien creature because it takes pavement in through its gut, digests the pieces and spits the grit out after it travels through its long neck ;-)
www.astecindustries.com/products/details/roadtec-rx-600-cold-planer
From that page:
THE RX-600 IS A 675 HORSEPOWER COLD PLANER AVAILABLE WITH 4-TRACK ASSEMBLIES OR OPTIONAL 3-TRACK ASSEMBLIES.
The one they're using has 4 track assemblies.
At the rate they're moving, I'm not sure if the better half will be able to get out to her appointment with the therapist (she needs to leave in about an hour) unless maybe I drive the truck across the yard to access the road where there is neither construction equipment nor dump truck blocking access to the road (my truck has 8+ inches of clearance so it can go out and in over the curb). They either expect the road-gator to eat up a lot of pavement very fast or the dump trucks have a long round trip to go dump their loads as they have five large trucks (possibly the largest road-legal dump beds available in a non-semi configuration) in line waiting to be filled.
I was awake most of the night with my back (So what else is new?) and it's not likely I'll be able to sleep with the road-gator shaking the house whenever it's within 150 feet. I'd guess the width it's cutting is 5 feet so maybe two passes for each lane - I'll know when they stop cutting on this section of road.
They clean up the remaining dust and small "stuff" with a powered brush vehicle (looks like something a Minion might drive in one of the "Despicable Me" movies) that brushes the loose stuff into the front loader bucket of a tractor with the vehicles running nose to nose: brush vehicle going forward, tractor going backward. Then the guys get out with the big backpack blowers to move the small stuff. There's a tanker truck parked up the road but I haven't seen the rear of it (I have no interest in walking through that grey/black cloud).
====
They were almost at the driveway when they needed to swap dump trucks so - while they backed the next truck into place in front of the road-gator, I backed the better half's SUV out of the garage, across the double wide driveway and made a 3-point turn that left the SUV about a foot from the road and headed away from the truck so she just had to get in and reset the seat to head out in time for her appointment. This old guy may not look like much but he hasn't forgotten the lessons from days of towing a 17 foot pop-up camper and having to back it into the not-user-friendly spaces at some campgrounds - took us less than a minute from starting the engine to swapping drivers.
Guesstimate on amount of pavement being removed - a dump bed full every 150 feet of road.
The tanker has started delivering its liquid cargo - but do you think the propane tank on the side of the truck might be a clue? Hot liquid tar to stick today's layer of paving to the previous layer of paving. But that probably means I'll be out tomorrow with some tar remover to clean the sides of the SUV - depending on when the better half gets back :-(
However, it doesn't look as though the sprayers deliver an even pattern of tar so does that portend a shorter life for some portions of the new pavement?
=====
We have yet another vehicle in view - I think it might be the paver but I only saw it as it went around one of the dump trucks out front. I need a weatherproof pan/tilt/10x zoom IP camera on each corner of the house so I can follow vehicles as they move ;-) There is a vibrating roller (my grandfather called it a steam roller when I was a little kid) so they should be putting pavement down soon - - - and they are, just not in a place that I can see with a camera :-( There are three different "roller" vehicles: two with steel drum rollers and one with nine pneumatic tires (CAT CW16) - all of them are vibratory devices. The CAT CW16 can have up to 33,000lbs of ballast to flatten and smooth the pavement it's used on.
Two asphalt smoothing/finishing vehicles are parked in front of the house waiting for work 200+ feet away to be far enough along for those vehicles to be needed. The drivers don't care - they're paid by the hour.
=====
Someone slipped up on the scheduling of the hot mix asphalt trucks - the paver has been sitting in the same place for almost an hour and about a dozen people are idle. It's not time for lunch as there is no food or drink visible just folks sitting in the driver's seat of some piece of equipment or leaning on a shovel or broom.
I guess it's not important - it's just a little residential road with a few houses on it - and besides, it's all being paid for by the County Govt so it's not a big deal if they're idle...
=====
Things are back in action as a truck of asphalt finally arrived ;-) Two of the vibratory rollers are in use. One metal drum style on the straight sections and the pneumatic tire style at the corners here the paving is being blended to the as-yet-untouched road the road being paved tees into. When the metal drum roller is starting up or stopping, it goes through a range of vibration speeds and one of those is likely resonant with some part of every house... Just as well I decided not to try to sleep during the day today: the various noises - especially the asphalt trucks raising the bed to maximum dump and pulling forward to a quick stop several times to slam the tailgate and clear the asphalt from it would have made sleep difficult to impossible :-(
And shortly after they emptied that truck, two more arrived. Will they have enough to finish the area they planed with the road-gator? At the moment, I'd put that at maybe - but they do have an empty truck to send for another load while the two currently available loads are used.
=====
They're out of asphalt again. Care to guess where the paver is stopped? Dead center of our double driveway and blocking the full width of it. I expect the better half back in less than an hour so maybe they will get it moving before then. If not, I'll tell her to pull into the lower driveway and I'll take the SUV across the yard and do the turns needed to get it onto the driveway and in the garage. I had to do those things to get it out of the garage so I can do more of the same to get it back in place.
=====
The paver is moving and the better half hasn't yet called to say she's on the way home. They might get most of the paving done before she returns.
Maybe I was too optimistic - the paver moved about 6 - 8 feet and stopped. If they leave it where it is, she would have access to one side of the driveway. The downside is that the metal drum vibratory roller is going back and forth over that section of pavement and the range of vibrations during each start and stop are rattling things in the house... Another good reason for not trying to sleep today.
I'm wondering if the paver had "just enough" asphalt left in its hopper to pave that much more and they decided to clear the drive after blocking it for an hour? It's not worth the walk and being wrapped in the scent of hot asphalt to go find out.
=====
There's a truck moving outside. If I hear it backing up, it should be headed to the paver's hopper. I have to say someone is NOT competent to schedule this type work because they can't maintain an adequate flow of paving material. By my count, they wasted at least two hours waiting on "the next truck" (an hour each time) and there was nothing else for the crew to do but wait..
=====
They've finished today's paving as the tractor is using the frontloader bucket to get asphalt out of the paver's hopper for some fill in the curve at the intersection - the other lane from where they did fill earlier today.
The paver dumped the rest of the asphalt from its hopper and the frontloader is scooping it up. They needed maybe 10 minutes worth of material but had to wait an hour to get it. The manhole cover locations they did previously points to there being a LOT of paving to be done when they get back to this. I hope they do better with the scheduling of the asphalt deliveries or a lot of other people will get to experience their incompetence.
The big machines have been moved away so they're shutting down for today. What will the morrow bring? No idea - but there's at least a half mile of road with the old manhole covers located and new covers needing to be installed. So does that mean they dig up the new pavement to install the manhole covers at street level - the manhole cover they paved over today?
