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Important Considerations You Must Make When Going for Lime-stabilised Roads

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Constructing a driveway on naturally cohesive or wet soils is a difficult job. Such clayey soils absorb a lot of water, which weakens the bond between the soil particles even in an area where you've compacted the ground using heavy machinery. Thankfully, you can stabilise such soil by treating it with lime to suit your driveway construction needs. Lime stabilisation brings in desired moisture retention qualities that prevent hardening and cracking when the soil loses water. If you need lime stabilisation for a new driveway into your property, here are some of the important considerations that you should keep in mind:

Traffic

Once the soil has been injected with lime, the calcium oxide is evenly spread over the area that you want to stabilise before adding water. The water reacts with the oxides to form hydroxides, which require some time to cure and mix thoroughly with the soil. For optimal results, you should keep pedestrian and automobile traffic away from a lime-stabilised road for a certain number of days as advised by your contractor. Make prior arrangements to re-route traffic or inform your contractor early enough if you do not have an alternative route. This will help them in the project design considerations to ensure that they can accommodate as much traffic as possible during the project.

Anti-wearing Surface

An exposed lime-stabilised base doesn't stand up so well to the abrasive forces of the weather and traffic. If you are planning to use the road for more than a year, then you should consider the installation of a protective cover. Go for a bituminous seal coat that will guarantee the durability of your lime-stabilised base by making the surface waterproof and acting as a filler for fissures and cracks. It also improves the skid resistance of the stabilised driveway, making it safer for both motorists and pedestrians.   Weather Conditions

Warm weather is elemental for the curing process in soils that have been stabilised using lime. Therefore, you should carry out your stabilisation project during the hot season for proper hardening. In case of project delays that force the lime-stabilisation procedures into winter, you must be ready to cater for additional costs for freezing contingencies. For instance, the compacted surface will have to be re-rolled one day after a freeze to prevent negative effects of intermittent freezing in the future. If you do not re-roll the surface, its top most layer will always suffer some distortion or pucker every time the winter sets in.


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