Springville, Spanish Fork and Santaquin Cities chose Expanded Shale Lightweight Aggregate to chip seal portions of their cities in the summer of 2012.

Springville owns a chip spreader and historically has performed a chip seal maintenance project each summer in conjunction with a group of surrounding cities. However, 3 years ago, the conventional chip seal aggregate that was supplied for the job did not perform well and they had not chipped since that time. Some of the comments about this previous project included: “We had at least half the chips strip off the road.” “We had city council members asking us not to chip seal anymore.”

Although chip sealing is the most economical way to maintain an asphalt surface, the negative experience that they had, caused them to be reluctant to chip seal at all. Ultimately, after understanding that Utelite’s rotary kiln processed lightweight expanded shale chips do not break windshields, and do not peel or strip after being applied, they decided to give them a try in the summer of 2012.

The cities that chipped in 2012 did not have any problems with peeling or stripping chips, and received no complaints from citizens about broken windshields or anything else. Ultimately the representatives from each city expressed satisfaction with the outcome of the project and that they planned on using them again in 2013.

UTELITE lightweight aggregates do not peel or strip because they are porous, and do not contain clay or silica dust which prevents a firm bond with the emulsion. Numerous other cities have had similar experiences with peeling chips and have noted that those problems did not occur when they used the processed lightweight expanded shale chips.

For more information, please visit www.utelite.com.