Concrete paving project in Beatrice nearing completion

BEATRICE - Paving work is wrapping up on this year’s major street reconstruction project, in Beatrice.  Beatrice City Engineer James Burroughs says R.L. Tiemann Construction crew members were on their last concrete pour, Wednesday. The hope is to open the two blocks on 4th and Lincoln to full traffic, next Tuesday.

"The adjacent property owners have been really good to work with...the contractor has commented on that several times. Everybody has stayed off and parked out of the way, and its been a great project. If it wasn't for the weather...we were hoping to open this up about two weeks ago, but unfortunately, the rains set us back a little bit."

Contractor Bob Tiemann says crews had to pump out water from the roadbed a few times, following recent rains. The paving project has also been proceeding during a very hot stretch of weather. Burroughs says crews got a bit of a break on Tuesday.

"We started pouring at about six o'clock in the morning because of the temperatures, for the concrete and the staff. It went really well. We had cloud cover which kept the temperatures down. Concrete trucks were rolling in here, and we were able to get this knocked out really quick...and the temperatures at that time only got up to about 85 or 90 during the morning, so it was good for pouring and good for the guys working."

Burroughs explains why new concrete is left to sit for a while before it reopens to full vehicle traffic. "Typically we wait seven days to open concrete back up to traffic, but we also take concrete cylinders on the mix, and we break those concrete cylinders. They have to break at a certain PSI (pounds-per-square-inch) before we'll allow traffic to get on there. We try to wait until we get about three-thousand PSI breaks on the concrete. But, typically seven days, as long as we see that concrete is curing out, we'll open it up to traffic."

That two-block stretch is a major commuter path around the downtown area of Beatrice for traffic coming from both west and north of the city. The new surface is expected to hold up much better than the asphalt that has been resurfaced several times over the years.

"Every four or five years we were replacing this asphalt, so we're hoping by doing this, we can eliminate some of those future costs and get this to last a little bit longer than that."

Tiemann Construction crew members were pouring the south side of the intersection at 4th and Grant, Wednesday morning.