Red Phone: Chip seal street not sealed

“The city recently put a cheap chip seal coating on our street near Las Animas School. For those who don’t know what this is, it’s a low cost way of preserving pavement. It’s a oil seal with small rocks that stick to it. Basically a mess. The problem is that it has now been a couple months and the small rocks are everywhere. And I mean everywhere, even in the garage and in our house. They have damaged some of our neighbors wood floors. We have called the city to come out and take a look at it and they say this is normal. I can’t believe that after months have gone by that the rocks should still be coming up. Nobody in the neighborhood is happy about this and the part that still amazes me is that the streets are only nine years old and did not even need to be sealed. There are much worse streets in Gilroy.”
Red Phone: Dear Hang Loose, Chip sealing has been used throughout the United States as an economical solution to having to resurface an entire street. Some estimate that it costs 1/4 less. It is done as a preventive maintenance step rather than after problems occur and usually lasts around seven years. It is designed to  keep the asphalt underneath from wearing out and to keep water from seeping through the surface and damaging the pavement.
“If you wait until the pavement is in poor condition, it would be too late for an economical treatment,” said David Stubchaer, operations director for the City of Gilroy.
The loose chips on streets do disappear after time, but sometimes it takes longer for streets that aren’t used as often, Stubchaer said. But he said the city is working with the contractor to sweep the streets again in addition to what was done originally just after placement of the chip seal in order to try to get rid of any loose chips that remain.
Streets are selected from a maintenance database the city keeps and the number of streets fixed at a time depend on funds and grants available, Stubchaer said.