Posted Sep. 25, 2015 at 12:01 AM

An alternative roadway reparation technique utilized by the Harvey County Road and Bridge Department to save on costs has earned star marks after a recent round of testing.Over the past year the county has contracted out 19.3 miles of paved road to Dustrol Inc., Towanda, to be resurfaced using Dustrol’s hot-in-place recycling technique rather than a traditional surface overlay.

“What they decided to implement this year that they didn’t last year was a profilograph,” said Jim Meier, road and bridge superintendent for the county. “What the machine does is reads the defects in a road.”

The definition of a defect is any imperfection measuring 4/10 of an inch bump over 528 feet of roadway.The company administered the test on five miles of a recently completed stretch of East First Street starting at Rock Road and extending to the western border of Butler County.

“They read the results before and after (the work).” Meier said. “The before was a total of 361 defects on East First. When they took the profilograph back over that when they were done they had zero.”

Meier said the process cost the county just more than $1.5 million. He said that number is about 65-percent of the cost of a traditional two-inch overlay over the same mileage.

“Along with what else a two-inch overlay does is it raises the road,” Meier said. “Over time you actually narrow the road. The hot-in-place takes the existing two inches of pavement, in this case, picks it up and rejuvenates the aggregate.”

The fresh asphalt is then put back where it originally came from in a single operation requiring about 1,000 feet of equipment.

“We do still have roads that this is not a viable solution for,” Meier said. “Those roads will still get an overlay.”

Meier said while not a catchall solution for the resurfacing of county roads, he hopes to use the hot-in-place process as an ongoing solution for a significant portion of county mileage.