Fog Sealing

The street division sprays about 30,000 gallons of sealer on city streets each year. The goal is to treat one fifth of the city streets each year, which is currently amounts to 20 miles of streets. This particular maintenance activity, by itself, increases the service life of our streets an additional five years. Therefore, it is highly probable that your street will receive a fog seal treatment once every five years. The fog sealing program saves the City of Los Banos approximately $100,000 per year from needing other more expensive maintenance activities.

Click on Sample Flyer to view an example of the notice that is distributed to each residence and/or business, at least 24 hours prior to the work being done, when their street will be affected by the asphalt treatment.

The summer season is the window of opportunity for applying this particular surface treatment. During the summer month’s residents are encouraged not to leave vehicles or trailers parked in the street so as to avoid the possibility of being towed because of street work. This is especially important for residents who may be out of town during the week, on vacation or business, and miss the 24 hr notice for street work.

(Leaving unattended vehicles in the street more than
72 hours is a violation of local ordinances.)
NOTE: All ordinance violations can be issued a monetary fine to promote compliance.

Purpose: Fog Sealing is an application of diluted asphalt emulsion. The emulsion is used to seal and enrich the asphalt pavement surface, seal minor cracks, and prevent unraveling of the street. The application is a preventive maintenance activity and is scheduled long before the street or road shows visual signs of any structural damage.

Service Life: The anticipated results, of the fog seal activity depends on the properties of the underlying pavement, its exposure to sunlight, and water. The service life or performance length of this type of maintenance activity is usually three to five years.

Budget: The cost per square foot of this maintenance activity is only one tenth of the funds required to rehabilitate a street. When an asphalt street is neglected to the point of needing rehabilitation, more expensive repairs such as a "Hot Mix" overlay are scheduled. This makes the fog sealing maintenance activity an extremely cost effective process in the management of our city streets.

Results: The road system in the City of Los Banos is the largest monetary asset in the city's infrastructure. However, the importance of proper pavement management can go unnoticed until the ride quality of the streets that YOU drive on has deteriorated. At that point, the cost of returning the street to a smooth ride has increased ten fold, when compared to this less costly maintenance activity of fog sealing.