Hot-in-place paving pilot project drives forward in Sudbury

Mixing old with new, crews in Greater Sudbury are repairing the city’s roads using a process calls hot-in-place paving.

The process requires old pavement first be softened with heat. It's scraped from the roadway and then milled and mixed with a rejuvenator using equipment on-site.

The recycled mix is then placed on the road surface.

"We are able to completely reuse the existing material that is on the roadway," said Michael Schmidt, a technical co-ordinator with Road Surfacing Recycling.

“It's an alternative to conventional hot mix asphalt paving, which normally involves removing existing material and bringing new material in. Because this process uses everything that is in place already, we are able to move at a much faster pace.

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Hot-in-place paving is a pilot project the city is undertaking that will be assessed and reviewed in the fall. This summer, it will be used on part of the Kingsway, Municipal Road 35 and Radar Road.

"This treatment is best applied to roadways that are about 15-20 years of age and has surface defects,” said Miranda Edwards, a project manager with Greater Sudbury.

“So it's best applied when we are correcting surface defects only.”

City officials said the work can only be done in dry weather and the production rate is up to two kilometres of one lane of a roadway per day.

"It's completed by an equipment train so when the train passes through, it's completely done,” Edwards said.

“So it happens in one step. So the impact to the travelling public while might be higher while the process is occurring, it's actually shorter duration.”

Officials with Road Surfacing Recycling, an Ajax-based company, said it has done work across Ontario for more than 20 years.

"Because we do everything in situ without having to bring or remove material, we are able to save time and we are able to save money compared to convention paving," said Schmidt.

The company said it's doing its own quality control testing at an onsite lab.

The city confirmed it's sending samples to an independent lab to ensure the asphalt meets provincial standards.