Roads are something you may not think about a lot, but at Cypher Environmental, we believe road infrastructure is a very important public asset.
Roads are vital to help a nation grow and develop. They play a crucial role in economic development and provide access to education services, health, employment, natural resources, and social development.
That’s why we care so much about creating stable roads with environmentally-friendly inputs.
Why Are Stable Roads Important?
Road stabilization improves safety on your worksite, increases site efficiency and working conditions during unfavourable weather, and helps to avoid immobilized vehicles on-site. Soil stabilization will also minimize erosion or other detrimental effects that require costly maintenance and rehabilitation of infrastructure and increase the load-bearing capacity of the road.
Most stabilization methods use some type of byproduct or waste material that can make your road stronger or harder, but it’s not an engineered or long-term solution.
All Cypher Environmental products have been carefully and meticulously researched and developed in the lab, based on our understanding of roads and engineering properties. Therefore, it allows us to engineer our products to do what we want them to do, as opposed to finding out a byproduct has some sort of benefit when applied to a road. We engineer proper solutions that solve the problems in which they are designed for, which all eventually fall under improving the engineering properties of the treated roads.
Cypher Environmental’s dust control and soil stabilization products alter the soil to enhance the road’s physical properties. Whether it’s doing something mechanically or adding a physical product to the soil to make it more stable, we do this to enhance the engineering properties of the road.
Roads require maintenance, renewal, and modernization to last over time and use. It’s important to enhance and preserve road benefits to prevent deterioration, increase safety, and avoid the high cost of replacing entire sections of the road. Decision-makers should keep these high costs in mind when choosing a road stabilization product and road management plans.
The Story Behind ROAD//STABILIZR® & DUST/BLOKR®
Cypher Environmental was founded on the ROAD//STABILIZR® technology. It was our first big idea. Our objective was to create an environmentally-friendly, non-toxic alternative to road stabilization solutions that was an affordable, long-term fix that worked on high clay content material. Our final product met those targets, and also reduced swell, permeability, and deflection, as well as increased CBR values.
Our next goal was to create a solution with a more broad focus that worked on almost all material types found in roads, not just clay. This product was designed with the target to not only reduce dust emissions and eliminate surface erosion but also stabilize the road for a more robust running surface and reduce operating costs to manage the treated road network(s).
Our team then developed DUST/BLOKR®, which also fits nicely into our environmental / sustainability policy, as the product was designed to not only provide stability and dust control but do so while being an environmentally friendly alternative to salt, arguably the most prevalently used road dust palliative on the market today. The main benefit is dust control, but it has other stabilizing benefits like gains in CBR value, and a reduced grading and maintenance frequency on treated roads.
Even with these exceptional, environmentally-friendly solutions, it is still a challenge competing with the products that have been on the market for dozens of years. They have become the status quo.
Since our products are newer, decision-makers like engineers have to deal with a lot of red tape to get a project moving forward. We’ve been around for several years now, but Cypher Environmental is still sometimes considered the new kid on the block!
Why Use Cement in Soil Stabilization?
One of the biggest competitors for soil stabilization is cement.
Cement is a binder and is used in many cases to increase shear strength of a road, while adding extra water resistance. However, ROAD//STABILIZR® utilizes the naturally-occurring clay in the road as a binder to, which is normally thought of as a marginal engineering input. By enhancing the engineering properties of the clay permanently, we are able to provide our clients with long term stability, at a fraction of the cost of traditional stabilization methods, such as cement.
Cement remains a pricey road stabilization solution. The volume and logistical costs of cement are substantial. ROAD//STABILIZR® is a more cost-effective option for soil stabilization. Cement is applied 5-7% by weight of soil. If you are treating one kilometre of secondary road at 5%, you would need roughly 80 tonnes of cement. To treat the same area with ROAD//STABILIZR®, you would only need approximately 40 litres of product, which is less than two jugs of ROAD//STABILIZR®!
Cement is brittle and sets in a matter of hours. If there is an error along the way, you may have to redo the entire project. Once cracking occurs, you can’t fix it without ripping up the road (or damaged section) and redoing the entire project. With ROAD//STABILIZR®, you have up to a week to work the soil before you compact it and it starts to set and cure. Our treated roads also remain pliable. You can maintain ROAD//STABILIZR® treated roads and re-compact them, the major benefit being that grading frequency goes down dramatically due to the added stability after the product is applied.
At the end of the day, the more you use a cement road, the faster it potentially deteriorates. The more you use an ROAD//STABILIZR® treated road, the denser it gets, leading to added stability. The traffic maintains the high density that we achieve during the compaction process. In fact, one can argue that a heavily trafficked ROAD//STABILIZR® treated road actually performs better than roads with lighter traffic.
So our biggest differentiator is in the longevity we are able to produce once ROAD//STABILIZR® is applied, in terms of long term stability and reduction of OPEX, and of course, let’s not forget about the concentration! The logistical savings along propel ROAD//STABILIZR® into a category of its own, in terms of long term stabilizers.
Start Building Stronger Roads Today
All Cypher Environmental products are sustainable, environmentally friendly and highly concentrated. It’s the level of expertise we bring as a company that not only allows us to provide a great product, but provide a service to our clients that ensures they know how to use our products, resulting in great roads every time. When you tie those two together, you come up with a winning combination.
Start building stronger roads today. Contact us here to get more information on how to get DUST/BLOKR® and ROAD//STABILIZR® on your worksite.