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| The macadam process adds beauty and complements natural landscaping. Available in red, blue, slate, mauve,
and many other custom colors, the completed driveway can be made to blend or contrast with backgrounds or buildings. Hard angles of commercial structures can be softened, country
and oceanside settings can be enhanced, and historic home surroundings can be brought back to period times. |
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John Loudon McAdam, the Scotsman whose immodestly named macadam roadways speeded 19th-century travel in England, would easily recognize this
updated version of his revolutionary paving system. Since the introduction of this system of paving as an alternative to blacktop, it has become very popular, not only for its beauty, but also for its reasonable cost. "The composition is something like peanut brittle," says This Old House producer Bruce Irving. In McAdam's day, the peanuts were a bed of stones,
and the binding brittle was a sprinkling of fine sand or cinders.  Today, paving contractor Larry Torti substitutes crushed recycled asphalt paving, securing the chunks by spraying on liquid asphalt. He tops the lumpy black goo with
1/4" gravel, then mashes the whole to monolithic stability with a 10-ton roller. The finished road is so solid that a 30-ton truck will leave no impression, yet the look is so pleasantly casual - more like a Nantucket
scallop-shell drive than a blacktopped highway.
Macadam drives come in a variety of colors, provide excellent traction on icy
days, and require minimal maintenance - just a new coat of liquid asphalt and grit stone every decade. And, when you resurface, you can even change the color if you want to. |
