The roadway maintenance thread

[knucklegary]

Chillin,

Looks like wonderful area to live!
Do you ever search for historical artifacts using a metal detector?

I live near historical Sutters Fort, and even closer, it's only 30mins to Sutters Mill, Coloma CA.. Yes,, there's gold in dem dar hills!

Offroad and/or All Wheel drive is a must around my neck of the woods.. Most all roads are chip sealed annually. I hate the stuff it's messy crap for your vehicles under carriage and wheels.. Road crews use a crushed serpentine rock (road base) from a nearby quarry. Street sweepers make many passes to clean up the excess rock but it takes a few months of vehicles traffic for the mess to settle down and stop flying into wheel wells and drivers on my six

Hey, I'd come visit if I lived closer and bring some toys!

 

[chillinn]

Chillin,

Looks like wonderful area to live!
Do you ever search for historical artifacts using a metal detector?

No, but I think about all the stuff that must be there unfound all the time. You can kind of tell when there is a man made fortification, even though there's 200yo trees growing out of it, just looks like a long mound.

I live near historical Sutters Fort, and even closer, it's only 30mins to Sutters Mill, Coloma CA.. Yes,, there's gold in dem dar hills!

Well, if I lived there I'd have a metal detector. I wonder how much gold is left.

Offroad and/or All Wheel drive is a must around my neck of the woods.. Most all roads are chip sealed annually. I hate the stuff it's messy crap for your vehicles under carriage and wheels.. Road crews use a crushed serpentine rock (road base) from a nearby quarry. Street sweepers make many passes to clean up the excess rock but it takes a few months of vehicles traffic for the mess to settle down and stop flying into wheel wells and drivers on my six

I like that people off road and have fun, but it sort of bothers me how many 4WD vehicles are on the road, especially in urban areas, like along the coast in SoCal. I guess they need them for that rough LA terrain.

Hey, I'd come visit if I lived closer and bring some toys!

The UK group is getting together, sounds like they planned well, good food and flashlight places. This pandemic needs to end, and then we need to have a huge meet somewhere that most can get to that is interesting and dark. How about Santa Fe? Or maybe Big Bend... really really dark at night there.

 

[knucklegary]

The only way to get to the gold is panning, panning, and more panning. If you're lucky that will get ya about thirty bucks worth for a hard days work
Big Bend, CA is a great spot to visit, I've been there many times. Not to mention Bend, OR lava beds. There you'll find caves, lava tubes, that will make your bung hole pucker when the cheap import headlamp takes a dump and you're backup flashlight, a Streamlight aaa, dang it ● !! got left it in my shorts

... live and learn

 

[knucklegary]

Btw, lava beds provide excellent road base. My last visit was more than a few years ago. A large section of US 101 was freshly repaved and it was smoooth, like riding on a carpet

 

[bykfixer]

That's pretty cool about the cheese waste being used as a bond breaker pre-treatment Orbital. It sounds like it would make a great bond breaker and then just go back to being part of the environment.

Pavers began using liquid chicken fat to keep asphalt from sticking to truck beds for a while. Now many use Citrosol for the same thing.

 

[Chauncey Gardiner]

The only way to get to the gold is panning, panning, and more panning. If you're lucky that will get ya about thirty bucks worth for a hard days work
Big Bend, CA is a great spot to visit, I've been there many times. Not to mention Bend, OR lava beds. There you'll find caves, lava tubes, that will make your bung hole pucker when the cheap import headlamp takes a dump and you're backup flashlight, a Streamlight aaa, dang it ● !! got left it in my shorts

... live and learn

Time to turn in your Flashaholic badge.

 

[bykfixer]

Btw, lava beds provide excellent road base. My last visit was more than a few years ago. A large section of US 101 was freshly repaved and it was smoooth, like riding on a carpet

The computer controlled pavers are amazing.

Where my sister lives the chip seal is tar and sea shells. Slippery when wet but really cool to look at while walking Fido and FeeFee. (in good weather of course)

 

[night.hoodie]

On my way in and out, there is an interesting gulch and turn that somehow scares any passenger into thinking they'll hit the tree. I have not experienced it myself, and there is no such anything from the driver's seat. I am standing in the gulch, at the corner the passenger will complain, to take that second picture.

Forgot I also shot a video of the same location. It doesn't really show anything, and but I find it hilarious. The car that passes is my neighbor who works part of a graveyard shift somewhere, don't know him too well, but i have a lot of sympathy having worked 11PM-7:30AM before at a data center alone. I suspect he is a nurse, but who knows? Anyway, this is 4:30AM yesterday morning. I think I was attempting to show how long and deep the gulch is between the road and the yard. I suppose if I was serious, I would have done this during the day. Video is 38 seconds long, and shows a lot less than I had hoped. My camera simply doesn't detect brightnesses as well as dark adapted human eyes.



Terrible. I am not sure why I find this thing so fascinating. I guess I have never seen anything like it before I moved in. It is between 3-4ft deep, and at the top 4-5ft wide. It stretches from where I stood about 40 yards to the corner, and around the corner for another 40 yards or so, and from the corner there is a similarly sized gulch across the street, they parallel each other until they just end. One would assume they are for drainage, but no matter how much rain we get, even when the street floods near there, I have never seen any water in these gulches. Maybe that means they do their job. The neighbor with the gulch across the street uses hers to burn her leaves, which is in fact illegal, using the gulch to do that, but no one is going to complain.

When I have the chance, I'll get some daytime photos and edit in here, just so it is more obvious what I am trying to show. I am disappointed I was unable to show much with my flashlight. I need a better camera and some brighter lights.

 

[bykfixer]

I got word my next assignment will be watching over bridge repairs. Namely repairs underneath. The piers that the bridges set on have concrete flaking off due to the steel cages inside of the concrete rusting. I will be inspecting anodes being installed that will be the conduit for corrosion instead of the steel cages then a cathotic protective concrete sprayed over that.
Experimental stuff involved so it should be pretty cool with lots of scientists geeking out on the whole thing. Until then I'm observing a city block get revamped with improvements including lighting (my favorite part) and a concrete round about that has been built in pieces already about 300 miles away and will be brought in on trucks and assembled like a puzzle in a couple of weeks. Another experiment in my area.

 

[orbital]

+

About 3.5 years ago construction started on a big project about 3 miles from me, if you drew a straight line. It was on the base of a hill, leading up to a forest.
When I say big, wondering if it was going to be a Costco or something.
Thing is, being out in the country it really wouldn't make sense. location,location,location,


Anyway, talking with my brother-in-law he said it was going to the new Highway Department Facility & it was supposed to be like $7 million joberoo.

It eventually turned out good & the crew is not far -- -- :thumbsup:

 

[bykfixer]

When I first started in the biz I worked for a town where a paving budget was about a years salary for a mid-level employee. Our curb and gutter repair budget was same. Snow removal, leaf collection etc, the whole budget staff, vehicles and all was less than a quarter million. One year we re-vamped a dam that was (gasp) a million dollars. Concrete for that thing was $100 a cubic yard and there were 88,000 called for.

Now as a consultant for places like local governments, or state governments to blow $8 million is easy. The one I was most proud of for a long time was a bridge we built for $275 grand. It came in on time and under budget so it ended up costing about $240k. Sweet. But now that environmental agencies have their tentacles in everything with so-called credits, which are like "protection fees" from the mob so we joke that a pothole repair that used to cost $5 is now $25. Much of it is justified sure. But when 3 to 5 government agencies oversee a pothole repair it's kinda hard to see the logic. I worked one project where we built a 3/4 mile bridge next to a road because that was cheaper than mining and placing the dirt to widen the road. And when I say cheaper I mean it was like 3:1 higher cost to use dirt.

My current assignment was inspected by an environmental guy who instructed the contractor to remove most of the erosion control items the customer paid to install last week because another agency guy said it had to be installed.

 

[peter yetman]

 

[bykfixer]

The weekend before Christmas there was an intersection of an interstate and a busy street shut down to set a big ole crop circle sized concrete disk into a hole dug in the existing pavement there. The roadway around it was repaved as well.
Weather was cold and windy. If it wasn't cold and windy it was raining cold and windy or wet cold and windy. Yours truely was the only person there with a warm rain coat and water proof leather boots. (thanks Gore Tex.)

The road was closed 24 hours longer than original schedule due to the rain event.

It turned out to be a nice looking crop circle.

The place was a crash filled 2 way stop intersection where additional stop signs made it a 4 way stop sign intersection during the month before a big election in the US so that folks voting early could safely pass through the intersection that prior to adding more stop signs was a dangerous one. With stop signs on all four corners crashes completely stopped. Ah, but enter Murpheys Law. Open up a round about and let everybody figure out for themselves what to do and when to do it and "watch out Cleetis, screeeech, bam"…… you guessed it. Smash up derby resumes.
Sigh.

 

[idleprocess]

Open up a round about and let everybody figure out for themselves what to do and when to do it and "watch out Cleetis, screeeech, bam"…… you guessed it. Smash up derby resumes.

Americans have an almost cultural aversion to roundabouts. My theory is that they're A) uncommon in the US, B) often badly shoehorned into locations with just enough space for a minimal intersection, and/or C) not engineered for reasonably smooth flow.

 

[bigburly912]

There is one in Kingsport Tennessee that big trucks just drive over because it's impossible for them to make the turns.

 

[bykfixer]

Americans have an almost cultural aversion to roundabouts. My theory is that they're A) uncommon in the US, B) often badly shoehorned into locations with just enough space for a minimal intersection, and/or C) not engineered for reasonably smooth flow.

Or my favorite D) all of the above.
Our engineers tend to use computer simulations to prove how well things work on that flat piece of paper. Now when a round about is incorparated into new construction the results are often very favorable. It's when someone in Albequrque NM designs something to be built at an existing interchange in Hoboken NJ with little to no constructability review beyond ensuring the engineers middle intial is captialized, then passed to an oversight team who is burdened with so much paperwork and record keeping they have little time to watch over the contractor who was the low bidder, many of whom bid low with intentions of making profit off all of the errors in the design resulting in change orders…… meanwhile the travelling public sees yeild signs as green lights and since so many people think arriving home 8 seconds sooner is a good reason to drive aggressive.

Another issue about round abouts is folks making left turns (at a conventional intersection) often have the right of way over people going straight in the round about intersection. That alone takes quite a while to get used to. Where I live it leads to "you go ahead" from car making left, "naw you go ahead" from car going straight and "honk! get the *** out of the way stupid!" from those behind them.

BB, this one was built for trucks to run over as they move around the island. One joker in a clown car sized Nissan just drive across it the other day as workers scattered to jump out of the way. Something straight outta tv with a Dukes of Hazard like feel to it.

 

[Chauncey Gardiner]

Roundabouts were invented for people that love their neighbor as their self.

Here in Washington State, they're the tenth circle of Dante's Hell.

 

[knucklegary]

And here I thought they were for people who don't know what direction they're headed in:sick2:

 

[Chauncey Gardiner]

And here I thought they were for people who don't know what direction they're headed in:sick2:

That too, Gary. They even wrote a song about them:

 

[idleprocess]

Or my favorite D) all of the above.
It's when someone in Albequrque NM designs something to be built at an existing interchange in Hoboken NJ with little to no constructability review beyond ensuring the engineers middle intial is captialized, then passed to an oversight team who is burdened with so much paperwork and record keeping they have little time to watch over the contractor who was the low bidder, many of whom bid low with intentions of making profit off all of the errors in the design resulting in change orders……

Can't speak to how things work in the .gov contracting world, but having a taste of commercial construction in a prior career, I can say with confidence that HVAC contractors often can't be arsed to so much as look at the ductwork layout than the architect thoughtfully included in the official project plans and will do whatever the f___ pleases them and manages ... some ... semblance of the airflow the architect had in mind for each space. This usually isn't a problem until some petulant little guy working behind them (like my former employer) finds out that there's a 48x36 duct running through the plenum space smack dab where we needed to install our own equipment in and our installer has to advise the HVAC contractor that they either need to rework their ducting or they need to clean up the penetrations he's going to make through their ductwork so our equipment could live where it physically has to be for the work area in the room. After some colorful metaphors, suggestions that this could be resolved behind a proverbial woodshed, and finally some hasty 3-way calls with management of all 3 parties the HVAC contractor learned the hard way that "some intern's" ductwork design was how they were going to do it after all.

I've also seen minor contractors perform far faster/cheaper/subpar work than the contract specifies, gambling that the GC will be so distracted by other major work on the project that they get signoff and ghost before anyone notices ... and maybe they can be called on to rework on that sweet sweet contingent open PO time and materials agreement where both are grossly inflated beyond their actual cost.