Rathsallagh House & Golf Club initially purchase a half dozen bags of EZ Street Aspalth for trial on varios potholes on our driveways. Prior to this trial we had been using cold mix tar and chippings.

We had found that nothing we have tried previously comes near to the pot hole solution that the EZ Street product delivers.  The fact that it can be ordered in bags, stored over long periods of time, and easily transported around the property for application when needed is a huge bonus.

Joe O’Flynn
Managing Director.

A lot of Britain’s roads are in urgent need of repair. The tarmac in this country has suffered several consecutive cold winters which have taken their toll on our paved infrastructure. The result: dangerous, often obscured holes in roads, which damage cars and disrupt the orderly flow of traffic.

Tarmac repair is the issue on everybody’s mind at the moment. Motorists are fed up with having to repair their vehicles, local authorities have been paying thousands in compensation claims for rickety roads, and the Westminster government is keen for their £3bn injection (given solely for the purpose of tarmac repair) to be used quickly.

There are so many potholes, though, that smart tarmac repair is more important than overenthusiastic tarmac repair. Teams should be sent out to repair the most serious pothole cases – the ones most likely to cause damage, injury, or loss of life. Car insurance comparison website Confused.com estimates that it would take local authorities about eleven years to completely repair every single pothole in the country. By that time, we’ll have had several more bad winters.

Local councils have been criticised for being slow to make tarmac repairs. But councils have had their fair share of money problems. It’s only recently that the £3bn grant from central government has allowed councils more freedom to repair their ailing roads. Tarmac repairs have since become more thorough and more frequent, with the £3bn going towards updated machinery as well as labour and materials.

Strategic tarmac repair is needed in some of Britain’s more congested cities. Traditional methods require the closure of the road, which can seriously affect businesses in the area. What’s more, the repair often takes weeks to properly settle in, and in the interim there’s a skiddy, loose road surface. Motorists rarely stick to the recommended 20mph in these areas. Newer ways of repairing tarmac prevent the site from becoming congested or dangerous to road users. EZ Street cold asphalt is one of these newer tarmac repair products. The product is instantly ready for traffic after initial compaction.

The hot weather we’re experiencing is a far cry from the harshness of winter. But in a few months the weather will (sadly) deteriorate, and the damaging processes that lead to potholes will resume. Tarmac repair needs to be planned now, arranged now and implemented now – there’s no point waiting until after the pothole peril has reached unacceptable levels. Tarmac repair is a year-round job.

When Ted Relf put up a pothole warning sign outside his home in Kent, a Police Community Support Officer came to his door and told him to take it down.

Mr Relf, a plumber from Shadoxhurst, was “surprised” by the response to what he felt was public-spirited behaviour. “It’s obviously rubbed someone up the wrong way,” he said. “It’s ridiculous really. If there are potholes then people should be made aware.”

And that’s precisely what some campaigners are hoping for. A petition, led by insurance website Confused.com, is calling for official pothole warning signs to be placed on the worst offending roads. A recent survey of 2,000 people found that 90% do not feel adequately alerted to potholes and 82% would like to see a road sign dedicated to the menace.

The number of potholes on our roads has increased in recent years due to particularly harsh winters, which wreck roads. Potholes cost the average UK motorist around £400 in repairs each year, and have been attributed to deaths of cyclists and motorbikers.

Obviously, putting signs up won’t solve the problem completely, but it will alleviate some of the risks – especially for road users on two wheels rather than four. “Although repairing these roads is obviously the long term solution, something needs to be done now,” said Mike Hoban, chief marketing officer at Confused.com.

If the campaigners get their way, potholes will join an illustrious set of hazards which are deemed worthy of a specific warning sign. Sheep, cattle, tunnels, elderly people, ducks and even toads all have their own sign. “But potholes aren’t considered worthy enough,” said Mr Hoban.  “A pothole road sign is a vital step in preventing accidents and reducing insurance claims whilst road maintenance continues.”

But the movement isn’t popular with everybody. Road users and conservationists are increasingly fed up with ‘signage proliferation’, whereby roadsides and junctions are cluttered with dozens of warnings and instructions. More importantly, residents and authorities are put off by the cost of putting up the signs – money that could be spent elsewhere in this age of austerity.

“Councils should be spending the money they’ve got to fill in potholes not putting up signs,” said Norman Baker, Local and Regional Transport Minister. “After all, we’ve given them a record £3bn over the next four years for road maintenance.”

The AA is similarly disdainful. “We should not be campaigning for a sign, we should be campaigning for the potholes to be fixed,” said Paul Watters, head of transport policy. “It costs up to £100 to put up a sign but £50-£60 to fix a pothole.”

Whether the plan goes ahead remains to be seen. But there is a strong argument in favour of treating potholes in the same way we treat other hazards on the road. Whether it is cost effective to erect signs or not will be down to governments and local authorities, but it’s clear that potholes pose a significant hazard to all road users – on two and four wheels alike.

My Company has recently tried using your EZ Street Polymer Modified Asphalt.

We deployed it in a very busy area of South London [SE12] on a long stretch of carriageway that had a wide variety of pothole issues, so it was an excellent testing ground.

We are extremely impressed with its ease of use, especially the compaction achieved. This was a few days before the coldest December in the U.K. for about eighty years …

Download the PDF to read the full testimonial.

Dave Potter
p.p. Highway Superintendents

Each wave of freezing weather brings with it massive road infrastructure problems. 2010 was book-ended by such weather, and while the nightmare it causes to motorists last long after the ice melts, at least there is a good period of time between the colder months to take stock, repair the previous winter’s damage and prepare for that which is to come.

So why it is that Ireland’s roads are getting progressively worse as the years go by?

You would think that the Irish authorities in charge of the roads would have learned lessons over the last couple of years, and perhaps taken a cue from Scotland, whose Transport Minister Stewart Stevenson ultimately lost his job over failing to adequately prepare for the severe weather… twice. Read More

The extraordinarily freezing weather seems to have abated (for now, at least) and our infamously weather-inept country is gradually emerging from the thaw. Airports are returning to full service, roads have cleared and trains are back to… well, frankly they’re back to their usual pre-winter reliability.

But now the sheet ice and snow has cleared, both drivers and pedestrians are being treated to notably worse road and pavement conditions. If you thought the potholes were bad before the severe weather, you’ll no doubt have noticed that a heavy bout of freeze-thawing action has only worsened existing potholes, and the addition of some new ones is painfully obvious.

Read More

Winters in Buckinghamshire, near London in South-East England, have been getting colder and colder over the past few years. This is one reason that scientists are so eager to make the case that it is important for everyone to refer to it as ‘climate change’ or ‘global weirding’ rather than ‘global warming.’ And it makes sense to do this; even with these extra-cold winters the average temperature of the year, as a whole, is new record high. But you wouldn’t know it by the record cold temperatures that are gripping the U.K. this winter.

You don’t just see the effects of the temperature on the weather report in the morning or when you step out of your house, but you feel it as you drive to work every day. As you bump up and down through potholes you feel the effect of the cold weather deteriorating Britain’s roads. It’s not just kids and mechanics who are cheering the onset of the cold weather and inevitable snow-days and pay-days, but also companies doing tarmac repair. Read More