Surfacing terms

Added by Martin Lucas-Smith

What is a cycleway constructed of "dense surf", "dense bin" and "granular material" like?

They changed the names of the layers of highway construction a few years ago. What used to be called wearing course and basecourse, are now surface and binder courses. So the dense surf is dense bitumen macadam (probably what you think of as asphalt) suitable for the surface course (the top bit, that we ride on). And dense bin is a slightly different recipe bitumen macadam suitable for the binder layer underneath. For footpath / cyclepath construction these are the only bituminous layers, and then below that there is a sub-base of graded crushed stone, the granular material.

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