The city of San Bruno, California’s, street department is usually able to repair about 2,500 square feet of asphalt during their fiscal year. Time and money just wouldn’t allow more than that.

However, like every other city in California, they have been affected by budget cutbacks and were seeking for a less expensive way to repair their streets.

Gino Quinn, field supervisor for the streets division, decided to take a look at the Asphalt Zipper to see if it could live up its claims of increased production. The demonstration he witnessed showed him all he needed to know.

He calculated that the AZ-300, the 30” wide attachment for a backhoe, would pay for itself easily in savings alone. He was right.

The city of San Bruno took delivery of their new Zipper on February 12. In two months they have already repaired 6,000 square feet of streets using the Zipper. That is more than twice as much as they normally do in a whole year!

Their second repair job was a large 980 square foot patch. The method they would normally use to repair this would be to first saw cut the perimeter, jackhammer a hole for the backhoe to start and excavate all the asphalt out. Then it would be loaded onto a truck and transported to a recycling yard.

Some additional base would have to be brought in. It would then have to be compacted and paved. Gino figured this job would normally take 2 weeks and approximately 350 man hours.

With his new Asphalt Zipper he was able to Zip the patch full depth, clean out the excess material, compact and lay the first lift of asphalt in one day! They came in the second day and added a second lift of asphalt to finish the job. Total man hours for this job was just 48! This process used only 3-4 men instead of 6-8 the old way. The savings were phenomenal!

Gino shared his savings in man hours alone. Cost of man hours to do this 980 square foot patch the traditional way would have cost him $15,759.65. His actual cost using the Asphalt Zipper was only $2,161.32. He saved $13,598.33 just on man hours alone on this one job! An 85% savings!

Gino admitted he still had to truck off the excess gravel from the job but he stockpiles it and uses it for unincorporated roads so it doesn’t go to waste. In fact it saves the city money again, because he doesn’t have to purchase new material.

ARRA welcomes Asphalt Zipper as it’s newest member. The ARRA (Asphalt Recycling & Reclaiming Association) recently celebrated it’s 30th anniversary.? The ARRA is an association of manufacturers, contractors and suppliers working together to educate and promote all the benefits of Full-Depth Reclamation (FDR) and other recycling methods pertaining to road and street repair and maintenance. To learn more about the ARRA go to www.arra.org

You told us what you wanted and we listened. The result was a new line of models re-engineered from the ground up. First came the AZ-300 for backhoes and more recently the AZ-500, the flagship, for loaders. In its first few months the AZ-500 has already become the top seller especially among existing owners. October so far has been all AZ-500’s resulting in some backorders. If you’re needing an AZ-500 we encourage you to get your order in as early as possible.

We’ve been notified by several customers that they have had great success using their Asphalt Zipper with emulsions.? They spray the emulsions just ahead of the Zipper, the resulting mixture they claim is giving them remarkable compaction, strength and stability.? The Zipper-Cam is heading to Portales, NM the end of October to check it out.? Check back in November for more information and likely a project spotlight.

Let us kick off our Asphalt Zipper blog with a heartfelt THANK YOU! for visiting our website.

The Portland Cement Association (PCA) just published their annual Full Depth Reclamation with Cement guide, a 12 page insert that ran in all of the McGraw-Hill Construction publications in October.

Featured in the insert is a story on how the city of Brownwood Texas has found that by using their Asphalt Zipper to do FDR with cement they’re able to do long term, full-depth repairs for half the cost of a temporary surface treatments.

What was once limited to larger contractors and agencies with big, expensive equipment, FDR with cement is now affordable for most any municipality, county or DOT thanks to Asphalt Zipper attachments. The entire guide can be viewed here PCA’s 2006 FDR Guide

City of Brownwood, TX is winning the war on higher asphalt prices and getting better results according to an article in the September issue of Texas County Progress. You can read the whole story at countyprogress.com

The Franklin County (Kentucky) Road Department recently used their Asphalt Zipper to do a study with the University of Kentucky on the effectiveness of full-depth reclamation with cement. The University’s report can be viewed at kyt2.com