GLOSSARY or The History of the World
Part 1
This page is under construction, please check back for updates,Y.M.D.9.1.4..2:52am. The majority of my sources are Wikipedia & Wiktionary if you need clarification & more detail or more stringent facts. I'm trying to include a little humour, personal opinion & experience. Also 1 heading covers many interrelated terms. Sign my Guest book, make a critique ( easy there ), a correction, a suggestion. Post a link & return the favour. ( When I have the time to develop the skill I'll replace all these brackets with hyper links. )
Asphalt
Asphalt is a liquid or technically a collide. It is the asphaltic cement that binds your driveway together. Liquid asphalt or bitumen combined with sand & gravel forms a composite process that was patented in 1901 as Tarmac. Although possibly done a thousand years before in Iraq. Asphalt is a natural formed substance from amebas formed from decayed vegetation being trapped below ancient lakes & glaciers during the ice age. Alberta tar sands, Lake Venezuela, Pitch Lake in Trinidad, The Dead Sea ( the lowest body of water on earth & is sinking 1' a yr. & has a circumference called asphaltites, the Dead Sea was called Lake Asphaltites by the Greeks & periodically spits up chunks of asphalt from the sea bed which the Egyptians used in there mummification process. ) as well as some smaller ones in California to name a few. Los Angeles suburbs have working oil rigs between houses on residential streets.
A naturally formed high viscosity collide ( a mixture of gas, liquids or solids such as fog, milk , glass, it can be 1 of either & another or 2 of the same except 2 gasses, a meteor shower - a Big Collide, ( lol ) of hydro-carbon ( see Cranberry Glass ). Bitumen & asphalt are somewhat interchangeable in layman's terms depending on your geography. At one time man-made asphalt was refined from the distillation of coal ( coal tar )which is chemically different than bitumen. Bitumen accounts for approx. 6% of an average crude oil deposit. But Canada & Venezuela deposits ( the heaviest ) account for 2/3 of the earths oil. Petroleum originally meant " rock oil ".
Liquid asphalt was used as far back as ancient Persian pottery ( Present day Iraq, cradle of civilization & Mesopotamia ) as a waterproof coating in Turkish style baths, 2,000 B.C. at least. ( also see the Asphalt page )
Tarmac
Liquid asphalt was sprayed over a Macadamized road ( see McAdam, macadam ) a gravel road developed by the Scotsman McAdam in N. America to overcome the multitude of muddy streets of the time being built in the frontier land.
The 1st. tarmac was made from coal tar (distilled from coal ). Now tarmac is made from bitumen ( crude oil). What we now call roadway asphalt, asphaltic cement ( AC ), pitch, asphaltum, black gold, Texas T that is, pack up the family & move to Fort Mcmerrily, $bills that is, or Fort McMoney ( lol ).
Tarmac is now mostly used in N.America as a term for airport runways but I believe it to be the best term for an engineered road & my personal favorite for asphalt ( see: tarmac.abelasphalt.com ).
Around 1765 Pierre-Marie-Jereme Tresaguet developed the original method of a built up gravel roadway crowned at the top for water runoff. Later perfected & simplified by Thomas Telford ( he raised the height & added ditches ) in the early 1800's in Scotland. Then a Scotsman in America, John Loudon McAdam in the 1820's. So that a water-bound macadamized road evolved into a tar-bound macadamized road. The tar was sprayed on to keep the dust down & water was probably used before that for that purpose as well as for compaction.
This tar spraying method was further evolved by Henry Cassell, 1830's; layers of fine stone & tar spray.
And then Edgar Hooley mixed tar & gravel in the early 1900's added portland cement to the mix, made it thicker & used a Steam Roller.
He pattened it in 1901.
His Co. was called Tar MacAdam. Bought out in 1905 it is a major aggregate Co. in England. Somewhere in there tar was replaced with bitumen in the tarmac mix. ( also see Slurry Seal, an asphaltic emulsion & portland mix used extensively in the Southern States. A 1/4" slurry recap topping ) Which became the portmanteau of the 2 terms into TARMAC, not the contraction or I'dn't've used it ( lol ). Not the original man made coal tar or pine tar but the tarry natural substance bitumen & McAdam, TAR MAC.
Bagdad had some version of asphaltic roads in 800 AD. Corduroy roads ( log ) in England in 4,000 BC. And signs of
stone road building in Mesopotamia in 4,000 BC & the Wheel in 5,000 BC. The irony of what some would say is a war of oil & the wheel, is not lost on me (sigh ). Doe's anyone know the name of the ancient stone road under water supposedly going to Atlantis, yea yea I know it's called the road to Atlantis ( lol ). Q: Excuse me how do I get to Atlantis? A: Take the Bimini road 1/3 of a mile & then turn...... Well there we have it, the history of asphalt, roads, the wheel & the cradle of civilization in a paragraph.
Asphalt Paving
There are 3-6 common grades of asphalt. HL1A, HL2A, HL3A & HL3, HL6 & HL8.
HL1A: used for fine patching & crack repair. A sand-mix. Not available everywhere. HL2A: used for recapping* existing residential driveways. Beautiful finish, but not super strong & more susceptible to oil penetration. Great all round use for patching residential & commercially.
HL3 & HL3A: used for all paving of roads, parking lots & driveways. One course residential, or top course ( recap ) commercial & industrial. HL3A has more sand. H = hot, L = liquid, 3 = 3/8", A=extra sand. Therefore HL6 = 6/8" or 3/4" stone. HL2A = 1/4" stone with extra sand. HL1A has hardly no stone & could be called HLA, & is usually just called sand-mix.
HL6 & HL8: used for a base course for commercial & industrial lots. Very strong but not good without a top coat. The stones pop out & it develops potholes very fast. A finer coat on top becomes burnished & is more resilient. ( see the asphalt page ).
Asphalt sealers
There are 3 asphalt sealers on the market
today. The one we apply most is sprayed or rolled on & is a liquid
asphalt based emulsion. The 2 commonly available in the store are water
based, acrylic & coal-tar. ( also see the Sealer page ).
Stone sealers
Slurry seal
I have used a similar product called driveway resurfacer ( see photo on the, about us page & see driveway resurfacer below ).
Driveway resurfacer
A similar product to slurry sealing is commercially available in stores. It's about $20. for a 10 L. pail. Expensive but, I used about 100 pails on 1 job doing spot area crack repair as well as cut-outs to try & keep the job from snowballing into a complete Re & re paving job which the Co. didn't budget for that year. Fills all cracks in a spider web area by use of a squeegee, looks great but larger cracks develop smaller hairline cracks, not bad though. Also has a sandpaper finish which can be used as a nonslip application. The main problem I had was the manufacturer wouldn't sell wholesale so I had to run around to approx. 40 stores in the GTA buying 1 can here & 3 cans there...( sigh ). And some of the stock was old so we had to work at it, a fresh batch goes on like butter but not if it's old.
Catch basins
Catch basins are the precast concrete rainwater receptacles found in pavement. Parking lots usually have sq. ones that are 2' in diameter. There are a few other varieties as well. A curb side for large volumes of water along curbs. A valley type where 2 cants ( planes ) of asphalt meet at a seam.There are special ones for parking garage concrete slabs.They all have a steel frame & a lid. They are attached to a sewer line. Residential ones are round & sq. 6" - 2' in dia. & are made of concrete or plastic. When parking lots are built the basins are set in at an approx. level for grading. That level sometimes needed to be raised up with bricks prior to 1973, after wards a precast concrete collar was introduced. The ones that were built using bricks collapse due to the hydrodynamics involved in the water moving below the surface of the asphalt & escaping into the catch-basin, this pushes the bricks in, causing the brickwork & catch-basin frame & lid to collapse. Another problem is frost pushing them up in the winter.
Manholes
Manholes are round precast concrete accessways designed for human access & inspection & may have ladder rungs. The lids are round as well & slide off unlike catch-basin lids which tilt up & could fall on a human. They should be installed slightly above grade so water doesn't flow in & form ice on the ladder rungs in the winter. I have seen a DANGEROUS, potentially fatal situation at least a few doz. times, where a sq. catch-basin lid was used on a manhole. Another possible legal combination is a combination manhole - catch-basin frame & lid that has a sq. frame & a round lid, depending on the amount of access required.
Rubberized crackfiller
Linemarking
Cement in laymans terms primarily is a compound of silica sand & limestone. It is the glue used to make concrete which is made by adding other aggregates. Limestone aggregate can be used as an exceptional base for all pavements. Approx. 3 x the cost of other crushed aggregate stone base materials it is not used on large paving jobs as frequently as in the past. Lime is the primary ingredient in Portland cement as well as ancient Roman cement. Portland cement has 2 setting cements, alite ( early ) & belite ( late ). Belite is also naturally forming in limestone as larnite. Alite ( Tricalcium Silicate ) has mostly negative characteristics except to speed up the set time. According to " mindat.org " a mineral search engine, alite is a synonym for halite which is salt.
The secret of concrete was lost for 13 centuries until 1756, when the engineer John Smeaton pioneered the use of hydraulic lime in concrete, using pebbles and powdered brick as aggregate. Portland cement was first used in concrete in the early 1840s.
The largest limestone quarry in the world is in Michigan.
Concrete & cement are the largest manufactured product in the world. China presently consumes 40% of global production.
Natural stone, paving stones or pavers have been found in England in 4,000 BC. And signs of stone roads built in Mesopotamia in 4,000 BC & the Wheel in 5,000 BC. The most common today is flagstone. Often consisting of limestone. Also known as shale. It is from ancient riverbeds made from ancient sea shells. ( historically similar to asphalt bitumen ) It is quarried & sorted into batches of relativley uniform thickness between approx. 1" - 3" & comes in light & dark tones. The thinner variety is usually lighter & best suited for vertical & horizontal adhesion to residential concrete steps & porches. The thicker darker variety for placement in a bedding aggregate to form a sidewalk or driveway ( see photo album ). The front of Art Deco office bldg. from the 1920's are limestone. As well as cathedrals. Susceptible to damage from acid rain. Musn't be cleaned with a caustic cleanser. Lime is made of salt ( see cement ) therefore can be disolved by it similar to asphalt being disolved by oil or gas ( see asphalt ).
Precast stones or house bricks have been made for roads & buildings for centuries. Today we have a whole variety of precast products that do a very realistic job of impersonating nature or not if desired. Some softer clay house bricks are susceptilble to damage by water splashing at the bottom 3' of older Victorian homes in downtown Toronto, these are often parged ( a hard word to find in the dictionary ) over with a thin coat of cement or mortar. The spaces between the bricks can be repaired with mortar as well, this is called tuckpointing. Dyes can be added to the mortar to soften the new against the old. Bonding agent isn't cheap but good insurance.
Precast Interlocking paving stones last forever if installed to a high standard. The cost of taking them out & relaying them is greater then replacing them so do it once.
Small garden interlocking stone walls are within the reach of the average consumer nowadays. Large load bearing walls over 3' - 4' high need to be engineered.
A crushed limestone aggregate or screening is an ideal partner in many of the jobs above. If I have a load of limestone in the back of my truck & it is rained on it is difficult to remove because it hardens up like cement.
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