At some point, you have probably been inconvenienced by a crew replacing blacktop on a public road. To most it looks like a lot of large equipment, dirt flying around, and a few guys in orange shirts. Do you know what that process involves or what those machines are doing? Maybe you haven’t given it much thought and were more worried about the effect on your vehicle’s paint job.

Many times, milling is the process used to repair a paved surface. This involves removing the asphalt surface leaving the sub-base intact. The process uses a cold planer that trails a drum head covered in spikes that dig into the asphalt ripping it up and capturing it.

Like many projects Blast it Clean does, we were called to remove the failing coating and prepare an indoor pool patio for repairs and/or new coating. The difference in this project is that the coating that needed to be removed was similar to asphalt with a sand aggregate. The surface that needed to be removed is the surrounding of an indoor aquatic center.

Can you imagine trying to complete the milling process described in an enclosed setting like that? Even a “small” cold planer is about 52” wide overall which planes a 12” run. The indoor aquatic center has drained every 10 feet which need to be avoided and only about 3 feet of clearance between obstacles. There isn’t any surface large enough to maneuver a piece of equipment like that.

The reason the customer needed to remove the coating on their indoor pool patio was that water was getting under it and rusting the rebar of the base concrete. Not only was it causing an eyesore but it will eventually mean structural issues if the problem isn’t addressed. After testing a small area, we were able to confirm the soundness of the concrete below. At this time, just the coating needed to be removed to save the facility from more costly improvements, but milling wasn’t an option.