Summer Maintenance

The Washington County Highway Department takes an aggressive and proactive approach to maintaining its highways and infrastructure. We strive to get 25-30 serviceable years out of our pavement surfaces that have been installed in recent years.

Maintenance practices that our department performs:

Crack filling

Cracks are routered, blown with compressed air, lanced with heat, filled with rubber, and topped with single-ply toilet paper. We try to crack fill at years 4, 8, 12 and 16 of the pavement's life.

Mastic

Mastic can effectively fill larger gaps in the surface that standard crack filling cannot and can also improve the riding surface making it smoother.

Chip sealing

Roadways are freshly crack filled and treated with mastic (if needed) prior to chip sealing. The chip sealing process involves brooming the roadway to clear off debris, spraying a layer of oil emulsion, spreading small pieces of fractured stone (chips) over the oil, rolling the chips to embed them into the oil, and brooming off excess chips. Roads are repainted within a few days of being chip sealed. Chip sealing provides a fresh waterproof barrier on the roadway and has been proved to extend pavement life by up to 7 years.

Shouldering -

Ditching -

Patching -

Culvert lining or replacement -