Old tyres give EK road a new surface

Jan 16 2013 by Lynda Nicol, East Kilbride News

South Lanarkshire Council are taking an innovative approach to rebuilding a road at East Kilbride – by using old tyres.

The tyres are bound into bales which weigh just under a ton and along with stone-filled wire baskets, they form the foundations for the new road.

South Lanarkshire Council have commissioned the works, which are taking place at Meadowhead Road.

Depute chair of South Lanarkshire Council’s enterprise resources committee Councillor Graham Simpson, said: “This is a highly innovative and unusual method of repairing a road.

“We are the only council in Scotland doing this at the moment.”

Meadowhead Road has suffered a number of problems in the past few years, mainly due to the level of heavy goods vehicles on the C-class road.

Investigations into the road over the years also revealed another problem – peat lies beneath the surface to a depth of up to 2.5 metres over a length of around 150 metres.

Continual problems with the road meant the council’s engineers decided the best course of action would be to remove the peat altogether and replace it with a material that would better support the road surface.

The tyre bales are made by stacking discarded tyres in a press and, once compressed, binding the bundle with baling wire. The bales are lighter than traditional materials, contribute towards recycling and were donated to the council for free by Clann Waste Management from Paisley.

Excavators are removing all of the peat along the 180 metre length of road and lining either side of the trench with stone filled wire baskets.

Part of the trench is then being backfilled with compacted stone but the deepest 25 metre section is being filled with tyre bales surrounded in gravel.

Once the trench is completed the road is being rebuilt on top.

Councillor Simpson added: “Of course with any new venture it is not without risk, but, because the peat has been completely removed our engineers feel there is a good chance this could work.

“I was surprised to come here and see the tyres and the way they are used – I imagined it would be churned up bits of tyre, not the bales which are in cubes measuring roughly a square metre.

“We will closely monitor the road and see how things go over the coming months.”