Brick restoration work set for Wisconsin Avenue

There’s plenty of street brick available for the City of Holton’s brick street restoration program, Holton Street Superintendent Rex Cameron informed the Holton City Commission, and this year, brick street restoration work will continue on Wisconsin Avenue.

During the city commission’s regular meeting on Tuesday — held a day later than normal due to Presidents Day falling on Monday — commissioners approved the street department’s program of repairs and maintenance for 2015 as presented by Cameron.

This year’s brick street restoration project, Cameron told commissioners, involves the 600 block of Wisconsin, between Sixth and Seventh streets, extending the street work done on Wisconsin in recent years. The 500 block of Wisconsin was restored in 2011, and the 400 block was restored in 2012, it was reported.

Cameron also told commissioners that there would be an adequate amount of bricks to be used in restoring the 600 block of Wisconsin this year, as well as for “the next two or three years, I would think, easily.” Last year, Fifth Street between Vermont and Lowell avenues was rebuilt as a concrete street, and bricks taken from that section of Fifth were put back into the city’s supply.

Bricks have also been salvaged from other city roads, he told commissioners, but not all bricks pulled up can be used again. About 10 to 20 percent of bricks pulled cannot be relaid due to cracks and breaks, he said.

But with each brick restoration project that is completed, Cameron said, comes assurance that there’s less to worry about in the future.

“There are a few more blocks that we’ll need to look at for full brick restoration,” he said. “But eventually, all we’ll have to do is replace the curbs and keep the brick that’s there. There are a lot of bad curbs, but we can keep the existing bricks, so eventually, we shouldn’t need as many bricks to supplement our supply.”

In response to a question from Commissioner Dan Brenner about what the street department will do if it runs out of bricks, Cameron said buying new bricks to finish street projects would be “tricky, to say the least.” 

“We have to match what we’ve got — thickness, depth, width — and if they don’t match, we really can’t use it,” Cameron said. “How do you lay one brick this thick and another brick that thick? We need the continuity. That’s why we need to salvage what brick we can here in the community, because it’s all about the same brick.”

In Holton, the process of restoring brick streets involves pulling brick from a section of city street, repairing or replacing a concrete base underneath the bricks, installing new concrete curbs and gutters, putting down a layer of sand and relaying the bricks on top of the sand. Cameron said a concrete base of five or six inches is placed underneath the bricks.

Elsewhere in Holton, Cameron noted that work on the city’s asphalt streets in previous years has driven up the city’s “pavement condition index,” which is used to determine which asphalt streets need the most immediate work. He attributed the improvement to having a milling machine available for work on those streets.

Cameron also noted that asphalt crackfilling work will be needed on 27 street blocks this year, and chip-and-seal work is also planned for another 27 blocks. Pavement reconstruction is also scheduled for another 31 blocks of city streets, he said.

One project planned for this year, but not included in the street department’s budget, involves chip-and-seal work on the driveway and parking lot at the Public Wholesale Water Supply District 18 water treatment plant southwest of the city. Cameron said PWWSD 18 will pay for the materials needed to chip and seal those areas.

Another project planned for this year, also not included in the street budget, involves the reconstruction of roads going through the city’s industrial park. Cameron said that project will be funded by the city’s industrial fund, and earlier in the meeting, commissioners heard proposals from King Engineering of Holton and Earles Engineering of Salina for the work, which likely will not be done by a city crew.

“An eight-inch concrete pavement would be my preference,” Cameron said of the industrial park roads. “We’ll consider what the engineers come up with, but I think concrete is the way to go.”

The Holton Recorder

109 W. Fourth St.
Holton, KS 66436
Phone: 785-364-3141
 

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