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ROAD MAINTENANCE (Repair) OPTIONS Road maintenance involves the repair of small failures (pot holes) in the surface or underlying pavement, so that the rest of the road can reach its nominated life in a safe and trafficable state. As the road gets older a number of factors will affect how much maintenance it needs. These factors include: - Changes in traffic volumes and heavy vehicle use
- Weather patterns
- Changes in the water table
- Gravel quality and subgrade conditions
- Installation of underground services
Road repairs are usually tackled by ‘patching’. There are generally two main types of patching. - Pot-hole Patching
- Heavy Patching.
1. Pot-hole Patching This involves filling holes that have developed in a sealed road with a mixture of bitumen and stone. There are three options of pot hole patching used by Orange City Council.
Jet-Patching: This process involves the use of the City Council’s Jet-patching truck. The jet-patcher pumps out a mix of bitumen emulsion (a mixture of bitumen and water) and stone that is used to fill the hole. It is usually used on small to medium sized holes and doesn’t require rolling as it relies on the emulsion to “break” and bind the stone together. This technique does not generally perform well when patching in wet conditions. Cold Mix Patching: This type of pot-hole patching involves filling holes with a mixture of emulsion, stone and sand. Compacting the material into the hole using a roller is generally used tor to compress the different sized stone and sand together. Depending on conditions, compaction is not always possible and the holes are sometimes filled above the road surface for passing traffic to compress. This approach is used to patch medium to large potholes, or where the underground pavement has given way in a heavily-used wheel path.(known as a ‘shove’) Cold-mix patching performs better than jet-patching in wet conditions, but is not ideal in wet weather. Hot-mix (Asphalt) patching : This is generally undertaken on larger areas where a portion of pavement and surface is removed and the asphalt is placed and compacted with a roller. 
Asphalt is produced by using bitumen, that’s been heated to approximately 180 degrees Celsius, added to a mixture of stone and sand and is delivered to the site hot.
As the mix cools down it hardens and forms the patch. This type of patching can be used in large to very large pot-holes (and ‘shoves’) and performs best of all patching techniques in wet conditions. It is also the most expensive and comes at a greater risk of injury to crews. 2. Heavy Patching Heavy patching is used when large sections of the road are badly damaged or deformed. The remaining surface is removed and the pavement gravel is pulverised by road reclaimer machinery. Then a binder is added for strength, the pavement is watered and re-compacted before a surface seal of either asphalt or sprayed seal is applied. This is a more complicated and expensive type of patching and is usually only used when the road is in a very bad condition. When the entire road needs to be replaced, there are generally two options.
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