Potholes.

[cee-dee]

After the Winter weather, lots of roads have potholes.

Round here I've noticed that when some are "repaired" they seem sunken, not level with the road surface and wondered why that was.

Today, I found out. At half past eight I was startled by a sudden noise. Contractors were filling a pothole in the road here and were using a whacker plate to compact the tarmac. When they left, it was level.

When I came home this afternoon I saw that the "repair" was now sunken!

They must have just chucked some tarmac in the hole and used the whacker plate but they hadn't compacted the tarmac in to the "bottom" of the hole. The traffic has pushed it down now. It'll fill with water and break up again before long.

[margaret*e]

There are loads of potholes round here, some in the process of being repaired.

[theelench]

It's the same around here, they're repaired but as soon as it rains they open up again.

I know someone who works for a company doing some of the repairs.  He reckons (and I only have his word for this) that the company is payed by the number of repairs made.  The men doing the work have targets each day to get as many as possible filled as quickly as possible. 

As always to hit the target they have to do a rush job, instead of applying the bonding properly it's just tipped into the bottom of the hole.  The company isn't worried that they break up as soon as it rains because they will get paid again the next time they repair it.

[cee-dee]

There's a few things wrong with the way the "repairs" are done.

The blokes doing it last year were going around with a bloke on the back of a pick-up and when they'd stopped at a pot-hole, he just chucked some tarmac down on the hole, used a long-handled tarmac tamper to compact the stuff in the hole, when done, they drove off to the next hole. The bloke driving and the one on the back never got down to the road.

If the pot-hole was wet (as they mostly are) the new tarmac didn't "stick" and there was always loose tarmac around the hole when they left. It broke up again after a while.

The current crew doing the "repairs" are also making no effort the "stick" the infill in to the hole so it'll break up after a short while and with them not compacting it properly, after the traffic has run over it a few times and caused it to become a depression, the next lot of rain will cause the depression to fill with water and that'll also cause the infill to break up.

I've seen "proper" repairs being done by blokes who remove any loose stuff from around the hole, they heated the hole, used hot tar around the bottom and edges of the hole before filling it with tarmac which they compacted properly. Those repairs lasted well but of course, they take longer and cost more but which is cheaper in the long run? Doing the job properly once or doing a bad job a few time?

[theelench]

If I understood what I was told correctly, around here they don't use hot tar for small repairs.  They use a bonding agent, rather like kitchen sealant or the black glue used with roofing felt.   OK if applied around the edges, it seals the repair and keeps the rain out, but if there are any gaps to let water in it's useless.  As water can't be compressed when traffic goes over the water in the crack it just shatters the tarmac. 

[**bustysinclaire**]

And of course a badly repaired hole is still more susceptible to the affects of freezing temperatures too. Where as if the patch was completely relaid it would last much longer, but sadly it is all too expensive. The council can never really judge how much to put aside for road repairs from one year to another. So as it always seems to be, do it the cheapest way possible, that is why you just get a couple of work men filling a hole with a bit of what they have left from any job that's been going on that week xx