Olive Plantation Road at Laharum and Schmidts Road, Brimpaen, are the latest Horsham Rural City Council thoroughfares to be upgraded from gravel to sealed surfaces.
HRCC completed the Otta Seals on these previously high-maintenance rural roads over the past three weeks.
Otta Seals are a durable and cost-effective road surfacing method that HRCC is increasingly using following successful trials.
Unlike conventional road-sealing techniques, Otta sealing uses aggregates of mixed sizes to establish a thick layer that is applied over the top of bitumen.
Initially, the surface may not look dissimilar to a typical gravel road, but over time, the bitumen works its way upwards through the aggregate and forms a smooth, interlocked bituminous premix.
Otta seals are only suitable for roads with low traffic volumes. However, they are a much better alternative to the continuous re-sheeting needed on high-maintenance gravel roads.
Traditional road surfaces are finished with a layer of stone chips that are uniform in size.
With Otta seals, the top layer is made of a mixture of fine and larger stones, so it binds together to form a seal that provides greater protection against water and sunlight.
The trade-off is that it isn’t as hard-wearing as traditional ‘chip stone’, so it’s unsuitable for roads that carry a consistently high level of traffic.
