Marathon County Highway Commissioner Jim Griesbach and his staff were concerned with finding a longer lasting solution to roadway design and repairs in order to deliver greater value to residents, businesses and visitors. One particular issue that seemed to recur was settlement at the approach to bridges. This can be a common problem when, over time, rainwater and melted snow seeps in between the interface of a bridge to roadway and washes out the fine aggregate particles in base course materials. Once those fines wash away, there can be subsidence or sinking of the pavement and the tell-tale ‘bump’ that drivers feel when they drive over the area.
One such project that grabbed the Commissioner’s attention was in the Town of Day on Highway C, and involved a 1950’s vintage box culvert design located between Old Hwy "C" and Fultz Road. Griesbach and Marathon County Superintendent, Kristopher Baguhn, took a proactive approach by learning about available solutions that would reduce the likelihood of having to repeat repairs over and over for a more sustainable solution for taxpayers.
Marathon County turned to the expertise of County Materials Corporation, headquartered in Marathon, and their cementitious supplier, Lafarge North America, to suggest best practices. Charlie Misslin of County Materials worked with Andrea Breen, technical services engineer at Lafarge, to talk about Controlled Low Strength Materials, or CLSM. The mixture, delivered by ready mix trucks, is flowable when fresh so that it can conform to all small spaces in an area and attain full compaction, an important engineering design element to prevent later sinking of the pavement placed on top of it.
CLSM sets up quickly and is less likely to wash away over time than compacted aggregates, so future repairs are reduced or eliminated. Other benefits of CLSM include the ease of placement in small areas, with no over-excavation beyond the project scope needed, economics of the mix over other solutions, and the local availability and recycled content of the materials, which add to the sustainable aspect of the mix. The Highway C project, which is utilizing the specialty CLSM mix, began on Monday, May 14, and is expected to open for business by the end of the month.
County Materials is a family-owned, American manufacturing company that offers a diverse line of construction and landscaping products for residential, commercial, industrial, agricultural and municipal project applications. Lafarge has been a lime and cement manufacturer for over a century, and is committed to providing Portland cement and supplemental cementitous materials, technical expertise, and sustainable solutions to the marketplace. For more information, call us at 1-800-289-2569 or log onto
www.countymaterials.com.
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