Last Saturday (November 17) we met a fellow Canadian named Susan down at Kaliko. She invited us for a meal at Wahoo while Papa was over on Lagonav. While we were there, we met Dave, an American from Iowa, who is setting up the asphalt plant across the highway from our house.
Mama asked if we could visit the plant for a home-schooling field trip. Dave agreed and on Monday (November 19) we spent the afternoon touring the site and learning how asphalt is made.
The AlMix plant accurately combines aggregate (sorted rocks) and liquid asphalt which is then used to pave roads. Estrella, a company from the Dominican Republic, has the contract to pave National Route #1 leads to Kaliko from Port-au-Prince. They will be paving 80 kilometres (50 miles) over the next two years. Haiti is providing all the rock for the job and Estrella uses the asphalt plant to mix it and make the road.
The rocks are first screened for size. Then a payloader puts them into the appropriate feeder. The controller adjusts the mix of aggregate needed and those rocks feed on a conveyor into the dryer. Once the rocks are dry they are mixed with the super hot liquid asphalt. It then goes up the drag conveyor into the silo to be loaded into trucks.
Elijah: "My favorite part of the trip was the water truck. It sprayed out water on the road. He sprayed it on the road before the grader. I got to sit in a backhoe. I got to move the levers."
Emma Grace: "My favorite part of the trip was when I got to sit in the backhoe with Elijah. I also liked to touch the sticky asphalt. If you hit it with a hammer it would smash into a hundred pieces."
Ethan: "My favorite part of the trip was riding in the grader. I got in and the driver adjusted the steering wheel so I could reach the levers and steer it. The coolest part on the plant was the burner. It looked like a rocket because a big flame was shooting out. The screener was neat too because it sorted all the rocks by size into piles."
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