Greavesy - Road Retexturing and Ultra High-Pressure (UHP) Water Jet Blasting Services

Greavesy's jet blasting service uses UHP water jets to treat road surfaces, improving road safety by road retexturing on macro and micro levels. UHP water blasting increases the Polished Stone Value (PSV) of fatted-up, bitumen-heavy roads by treating the binder and improves polished surfaces by returning the PSVs of aggregates to freshly crushed levels. It is therefore an ideal solution for road retexturing, increasing skid resistance and improving road safety.

High powered and efficient, it also removes road markings more cleanly and efficiently than burning, and removes any contaminates including rubber and grime build-up and spills such as oil.

ROAD RETEXTURING AND INCREASING SKID RESISTANCE

UHP water blasting performs road retexturing on a micro level, returning polished aggregates to freshly crushed quality – and sometimes better – vastly improving road surface friction. As the aggregates are physically pitted by the UHP water, the results are as permanent as laying a new road surface.

UHP blasting also shocks the road or pavement surface, forcing binder to react as a solid. It then chips off a fine film of the excess fattening to remove surface contaminates and reveal drowned aggregates, re-establishing macro texture.

The amount of fattening removed is typically slight – the process has been repeated on test sections on New Zealand roads dozens of times with no proved degradation to the surface's integrity. Water pressure and the movement of the washer head can control the amount of binder removed. Due to this, Greavesy equipment is fully adaptable and is therefore equally powerful for cleaning and retexturing aggregate-thin and aggregate-thick roads.

A New Zealand study (J C Waters, 1998-2004) showed improvements in skid resistance on road aggregates from PSVs in the 50s to 70s.

UK trials show that UHP retexturing improves the skid resistance of roads from PSVs in the 50s to 70s – and even as high as a PSV of 85.

REMOVING ROAD MARKINGS

The system is also perfect for removing lines on roadwork jobs and in car parks. It's almost as fast as blacking out lines, and more environmentally safe and less harmful to the road surface than burning (blowtorches burn off tar and weaken binding, damaging the surface).

CLEANING SPILLS

Because UHP water jetting completely renews a surface it is the perfect tool for cleaning spills and contaminates such as for road accidents, oil patches or grime build-up in car parks.

WASHING ROAD MARKINGS

Along similar lines, it is also perfect for washing road markings. A tractor unit on low power is capable of cleaning miles of road markings in one day, completely restoring reflectivity to brand new levels and vastly improving road safety.

WORKING WITH CONCRETE AND ASPHALT

UHP jet blasting is equally powerful on concrete surfaces, including motorways and airports, as it is on asphalt. It is used extensively for retexturing and cleaning concrete highways and industrial areas in the United States.

THE EQUIPMENT

Greavesy UHP equipment is typically a tanker unit and a washer unit. The tanker carries a water supply, a recovery tank and a pressurising system. The washer unit varies depending on the job and can be as large as a tractor – for road retexturing and cleaning whole road lanes in one pass – or as small as a floor polisher (a handheld device perfect for town centre jobs and paths).