ASHLAND — The Ashland City Street Department recently acquired an upgrade that assists in the way road crews fill pot holes on the streets of Ashland.
This new piece of equipment, called a hot box, replaces an older, less-effective way to fill a pot hole, city officials said.
“Traditionally, the city has been patching pot holes by simply throwing into the pot hole what they call ‘cold patch,” said Mayor Matt Miller. “It’s an asphalt material that is made up of stone and tar and so on, and is thrown into the hole and that’s how we made our patches.
“A hot box is this big steel box that heats the asphalt so that it’s more pliable when it’s put in the holes.”
The hot box is attached to back of a truck owned by the state and is pulled along the road. Workers equipped with shovels walk behind the vehicle and patch the holes when they pass them. Once a pot hole is cleaned out, workers shovel a hot, sticky mixture into a hole and pack it down, leaving it to dry.
The hot box has to maintain a high temperature to keep the mixture warm and malleable. Although it can actually heat up to over 100 degrees, the work crew in Ashland holds a steady temperature between 70 and 80 degrees.
“The reason why the hot box is so valuable is because it makes the material easier to work with, but even more importantly, it allows you to make a patch that traditionally lasts longer than when you’re just throwing into the holes that cold mix,” Miller said. “You can actually see the difference when you look at a pot hole that’s been patched this way versus the old style of just throwing in the cold mixture.”
These are the same type of patches that the Ohio Department of Transportation uses to make the patches on major highways, Miller noted. With this method, the work crew can patch over 200 pot holes in a single day, making roads safer and easier to travel.
