Research & Development: Weld South
Dust Control Project

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Weld County South (6 & 31) -
Weld County South is made up of sections of roads that are composed of "natural" road base. "Natural" road base in this sense means that no new base has been added to this road from a gravel pit. This particular road section is composed of mostly sand, less than 4% clay, and various round faced aggregate sizes. This section was chosen as a test site to see how long dust palliatives could potentially maintain a road without bringing in new road base prior to treatment. The treatment of these roads were all done with the same application techniques. Product was milled into the road 3 inches deep, then graded to shape the road, then compacted. Once the road was compacted a topical application of product was applied. The links below will show you the data being collected.

Dust Data -

Dust on dirt roads can become problematic from several stand points. Starting with the basics, losing fines from a road in terms of "dust" takes away precious material that binds the road together. Without the fines in the road, a road will become unstable and ravel out. Fines in the sense are necessary piece of making a road last longer with less maintenance. The dust data will show not only how much total dust is being generated by the road, but will also tell us what kind of particle the road may be losing. Data was taken before and after treatment of all the roads. This data will help to determine what the best product would be for treatment of this type of road.

Photo Gallery - 

Weather Data -

Weather data is very important when you evaluate a road, especially when you are evaluating unpaved roads. Factors like the amount of rain and ranges of temperatures are a vital piece of the story. By using the dust data in conjunction with the weather data, we can put together a more complete picture of what is taking place and aid us in evaluation of a road and its performance given the circumstances.

Leaching Data -

Leaching of product applied to the road is a concern from several aspects. The most obvious is that if you are leaching product off the your road, then your road is left unprotected. The second issue to contend with is if product is leaching off the road, how far are is it going and if its going to cause an environmental effect. In the leaching data collected, we are able to see what products have the potential to leach out of the road and how far they migrate from the road given the circumstances of the weather.