Potholes are popping like crazy in St. Paul — and elsewhere, too — and while it’s warm enough to feel like spring, it’s still too cold to get hot asphalt to fill the pesky craters.
Enter the asphalt recycler, a machine that heats used asphalt into a “hot patch,” allowing crews to apply a more durable repair during the winter until a more permanent fix can be made.
St. Paul bought what’s called the Bagela Asphalt Recycler, and the city has been using the portable unit for the first time this year to keep up as big divots are appearing.
“January rains will bring pothole pain,” St. Paul Public Works Director Sean Kershaw said during a pothole-patching demonstration a few weeks ago. “This is going to be another bad season of potholes,” he told the Drive in a phone call.
The city uses what’s called a “cold mix” during winter months. Kershaw described it as being like bubble gum that fills potholes, but it does not last. When the weather warms, the city fires up its asphalt plant and makes hot mix asphalt, which bonds to the pavement to provide a more solid and long-lasting fix.
The blacktop mixture created with the recycler is somewhere in the middle. Chunks of previously used asphalt are put in the machine, crushed, fused together with a binding agent and heated up.
“It’s not as good as the hot mix that comes out of our plant,” Kershaw said. But, he added, “it’s more binding [than cold mix], durable and stays longer.”
Cold, snow, rain and periodic warm-ups this year, combined with aging streets, have created the “perfect recipe” for a bumper crop of the menacing depressions.
