Asphalt Emulsion

This morning was the grand experiment using Latex-ite's asphalt emulsion product on the Cold Patch that we put on the reground asphalt that was the telescope garage's driveway apron.  Let me hasten to add that this is not the intended application.  I suspect that for what it is intended--resealing a genuine poured asphalt surface, it probably works just fine.  But it is pretty much impossible to get asphalt crews at the moment for such a small job, because they are all busy working.  Construction is going gangbusters in the Boise area at the moment.

First of all, on the Cold Patch that we had repeatedly rolled over with the cars, the emulsion went on pretty well.  The recommended tool for smoothing the surface was a bit too heavy, and was pulling up loose material from the Cold Patch, so we switched to a window squeege on a long pole, and it worked actually quite well.  When the emulsion reached the reground asphalt portions at the edges, not so well.  It tended to make a little bit of a gummy mess.

Still, it looked better than what was there before, and the emulsion appears to have turned into a single consistent layer, instead of the graininess of Cold Patch.

In the late afternoon, we noticed that while much of the surface was okay, some parts were cracking.  You are supposed to apply this below 85 degrees, but it did not stay that cool today.  By late afternoon, my wife, who had been comparing the consistency and color of the asphalt emulsion to diarrhea, was comparing it to a pie crust that had cracked for overcooking.  So we bought another 4.75 gallon container, and this time, we applied it in late afternoon, when the temperatures were dropping.  We also misted the surface first, as Latex-ite recommends, to cool everything down.

By nightfall, the surface, while still not as pretty as I would have liked (and realistically, with the base to which we were applying it, this is not a surprise), it at least was doing a pretty good job of making a reasonably consistent surface.  To avoid splattering any more on the garage door than we already had, we used various pieces of wood and metal to prevent that, but it now means that there is a small gap between the concrete and the smooth part of the asphalt.  I think the solution on this will be the trowel paste asphalt, which we can apply with a trowel to fill this in, as well as any cracks that develop elsewhere.  The trowel paste asphalt is actually the best solution of all, but it's pretty expensive and slow to apply, so I think we will use it as a coverup for the boo-boos we made with the asphalt emulsion.

We also applied three bags of Cold Patch to other parts of the driveway that have been damaged by heavy trucks over the last couple of years.  Cold Patch is really amazing stuff--for the price (about $18 for a 50 pound page), and how easily it turns into an asphalt repair, I am extremely pleased with it.  The only thing that would make it absolutely flawless would be applying the trowel patch asphalt onto the surface.  At that point, you probably couldn't tell it from a poured asphalt road.