TOTAL Tarmac Road Surfacing Contractors Blackburn & Darwen

Bitumen is a product of the oil-refining and petro-chemical industries. Described in basic terms it is the thick an sticky residual goo that is left over when all the useful fuel oils, such as kerosene, petrol, diesel, etc., have been extracted by fractional distillation of a crude oil.

Macadam is a process of binding together smaller aggregates, as pioneered by the legendary John MacAdam in the 19th century (although there are tales of the Chinese having used a form of ‘macadam’ as far back 300BC) His work resulted in the development of tar-mac. Nowadays, we use bitumen from the oil industry rather than naturally occurring tar, and therefore we now have bitumen macadam or, as we call it in the trade, bitmac.

According to the British and European (CEN) definitions is a mixture of bitumen and minerals. However, in the US, they use term ‘asphalt’ for what we in Britain and the rest of Europe refer to as Bitumen. This is the source of much of the confusion amongst non-trade professionals as to what’s what and what’s not.

The main difference in these two type of brick is the way they set hard ready for use;

A clay block paving brick has to be fired in a kiln in order to bake the brick hard, and a concrete block paving brick has to be allowed set

The concrete paving bricks are a porous form of brick formed by mixing small stone hardcore, dyes, and depending on the finished colour required, cement and sand in various amounts.

There are also other materials which can be added to make up a block paving brick individual manufacture. Many block paving manufacturing methods now allow for the use of recycled materials in the construction of the paving bricks such as crushed glass, and crushed old building rubble to replace the stone hardcore that is used.

At Total Tarmac Surfacing we offer a wide range of Block Paving Styles in Blackburn from leading manufactures, allowing us to create some of the finest block paving projects.

Tarmacadam, properly referred to as bituminous macadam or Bitmac for brevity, is often considered to be the cheapest method of surfacing for a driveway or forecourt, however for smaller areas it can work out quite expensive, and the red tarmacadam can also be more expensive than block paving. Tarmacadam ‘Tarmac’ has become a popular, although technically incorrect, term for both bitmac and for asphalt used to surface pavements, highways and even internal floors.