Interview with Daryl Hinds (July 27, 2004)
Walter Neaves, P.E. and Bryan Neaves, P.E. met with Daryl Hinds in the KC Engineering office in Marble Falls and discussed the HSB roads. Mr. Hinds has been under contract for road system work at HSB for 18 years. He also does other paving work in the area. He has adequate equipment to maintain roads. The following contains the substance of the interview.
His contract is a lump sum, negotiated amount. Services include all aspects of general road maintenance and repair, reconstruction, mowing, brush cutting and other road related needs. He was very cooperative and helpful in formulating some opinions about the conditions and needs.
Mr. Hinds explained that in the original construction of the roads poor quality material was used for some of the roadbeds instead of base material. Some material came from the ditches and some came from a local pit. This accounts for the numerous base failures observed in the survey. The subsurface dirt-like material is very vulnerable to water intrusion and becomes soft when wet. Some of the roads only had a single seal coat that went for 20 years before resealing. Some roads have been reworked using good materials. Some minor roads have had no maintenance because no homes are on them. When a house is built, the roads are fixed up. The survey rating results were shared with Mr. Hinds and it was discussed that the survey had rated the base good on most roads because they looked good just driving them. It was agreed that the base ratings were too high in most cases because he knows what is under those roads.
The seal coating program was discussed. It is keeping the moisture out of the base quite well. He related that the annual seal coat done by Llano County is often late in the season. The County provides the labor and equipment for sealing. Mr. Hinds' crew patches ahead of the seal coat work. HSB pays for the material for patching asphalt and the seal coat asphalt and aggregate. HFRS emulsion and Grade 5 aggregate are the typical seal coating materials. Roads to be seal coated are designated annually by Tom Engler, P.E.
Utility cut problems were discussed at length. Mr. Hinds is troubled by the uncontrolled cutting of pavements with little or no effort to make proper repairs. He has to fix them. Often cuts are made and the cut material is just shoved back onto the cut area with no effort to compact it. The lines are shallow and the pavement is not patched. There is no road cutting permit process and he sometimes doesn't know when it was cut or who did it. Methods of repairing cuts were discussed. HSB had a drawing which shows how proper cut repair should be done. His description of it sounds good. It was discussed that any major road rebuilding would require adjusting all of the utilities in the cuts. The need for a permitting process to get control of future utility cuts was discussed.
The typical section of a good road in the area was discussed. New roads in the local area use as much as 11" of commercial base material on a well compacted subgrade with 2" of asphalt pavement. Ribbon curb was discussed. The value of crushed stone was discussed and its local availability. Old HSB roads are really a compacted subgrade without crushed stone base and seal coat for pavement. This is lower quality than any subdivision would build today. Mr. Hinds said that The Legends might be a place to see some newer roads and he also pointed out that they had some problems with cracking.
Patching done by Mr. Hinds' crew is mainly filling the holes with premix asphalt. Very little base material is used in patching. HSB buys about 1000 tons of material for this every year. Cutting and squaring up patches was discussed. He did not mention using a concrete saw for this. He did mention having a jack hammer.
The need for a constant maintenance effort continuing was discussed. Mr. Hinds said that if it were slacked off at all, the roads would deteriorate very quickly.
The topic of County taking over the road maintenance was brought up by the engineers. Mr. Hinds said that HSB wants to keep the roads private and that County maintenance would not be to the level of maintenance that they could accept.
The sight distance problem in HBW with the big rocks was mentioned. He said that they do pose problems and sometimes they fall into the road, requiring his crew to put them back up. When asked if there had been any accidents because of them, he said that he didn't know of any. He said that his crews cut brush sometimes in HSB to maintain good sight distance on corners.
The interview was concluded with Mr. Hinds.
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