If your Tom Sawyer, this should be as easy as making asphalt
paving look like fun. Since this is probably not the case, you have to be
inventive in coming up with ways to get a few hours of free labor from your
friends. I can tell you trying to do this in mid July in one hundred degree
heat is not a good idea. Spring and Fall with their cooler temperatures makes
the work a lot easier to bear. You are going to need some basic tools that you
may have in your garden shed. Two wire framed straight backed gravel or asphalt
rakes, two short handled square shovels (not round point), a street broom, a
metal five gallon pail with a metal bail, couple of gallons of kerosene or
diesel fuel in a 5 gallon pail, and a pavement roller. The roller can be rented
by the day from many good rental centers. Word to the wise, learn how to
operate the roller before the asphalt is placed and is ready to roll. The
roller work is what produces the final finished product. You do not want lines
and bumps and humps all over the final pavement. If you know anyone who has
done any asphalt work before get him or her to be there. Bribe them with a free
dinner or drinks for a week if you have to. A simple straight driveway ten feet
wide and forty feet long will take four healthy, fit and active people to
install the asphalt. There are no rest periods once the asphalt arrives at the
house. Professionals use what is called a paving box that the dump truck dumps
the hot asphalt into and the paving box spreads the asphalt in the required
thickness over the entire width of the driveway at one time. The laborers need
to trim up the edges and hand tamp them, and pull back any ridges left by the
paving box and generally make the job look neat and clean. Once the asphalt is
down, one person will use the roller to compress the hot asphalt into it's
final placement. Your going to do all the work of the paving box by hand.
Keeping the asphalt level across the width of the driveway making sure there
are no piles or humps left behind is back breaking and furious paced work.
Asphalt is hot tar, stone, sand and cement according to the
mix ordered but the point here is, it is melted tar. How hot? It can melt the
bottoms of your Vibram soled boots in seconds and blisters on your feet are
common. The trick is to wear leather soled boots and to not stand on the hot
asphalt for more than a few seconds. If your feet feel too hot, they are. A
half hour before the asphalt supplier says they are coming, place a small
amount of kerosene in the empty metal pail and light it using some old rags.
Spray the shovels and rakes with kerosene and heat them in the lit pail being
careful not to set fire to the wood handles. Decide before hand who are rakers
and who are shovelers. Hot asphalt will not wait for discussions. Once the truck
arrives have him set his tailgate chains to spread the asphalt to the closest
thickness you want the asphalt to be. Remember the asphalt will shrink once the
roller compresses it. A typical home owner driveway is about an inch and a half
thick after rolling. Start with two inches of asphalt on the driveway. The
driver will be able to spread the asphalt but does no hand work. Once the
asphalt is spread, he's done. The work will be fast and furious until all the
asphalt is raked level and shaped. A forty foot driveway can take two hours of
hard work to place. Hand tamping the edges can go a little slower
but keep checking the asphalt temperature until it cools
enough to bear the weight of the roller but not so cool the roller cannot
compress it with two passes. The roller should make each pass overlap half way
onto the last lap it made. That keeps any bumps and ridges out of the finished
top. Broom off any spillage from sidewalks or public roadways. Once cool,
asphalt is very difficult to remove. Garage doors or landscaping stones for
instance all need to be cleaned. Place any excess in a little piles on a piece
of cardboard and it will be cake to clean up later.
Keep all car traffic off the new asphalt for at least two
days in cool weather and a week in very hot weather to allow the asphalt to
completely chill. Premature parking can leave awful looking dents from car
tires. One guy in a hurry left his car on hot asphalt and found four melted
flattened tires in the morning. Clean all your tools well before storing them.
Keep them hot during the work and at the end of the job re-heat them to scrape
off any excess asphalt. It will not come off once cold. Now if any of your
friends are still talking to you, light the grille and open the kegger.Visit www.roofheatingsystems.com
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