Several sections of North Juanita’s neighborhood roads will close Aug. 3 while contracted work crews apply a slurry seal to them that will extend their useful lives by five to 10 years.

It will be the first day in a two-week process, during which the contractor, Blackline Incorporated, will treat more than 30 lane miles of neighborhood roads in Kingsgate, North Juanita and North Rose Hill with the slurry seal.

This will be the 13th straight year Kirkland uses the mixture of emulsified asphalt and sand to maximize the lives of its neighborhood roads.

And for good reason. Slurry seal costs approximately $1,600 per city block to apply, compared to the $17,000 it costs to grind and repave a city block.

But slurry seal functions differently than new pavement does. Its purpose is to keep good roads in good condition. It achieves this by sealing the pavement from weather and by replenishing the aggregate in the pavement with the aggregate in the slurry seal.

To apply it, crews must close down the street and residents must stay off it—no cars, no shoes, no water—until the slurry seal has cured. For this reason, Kirkland uses it exclusively on its neighborhood roads—roads that few drivers travel.

In warm and dry weather, slurry seal can cure in four hours. In more humid weather, curing might last as long as six hours. “If the weather is 90 degrees and there’s no trees and no shade, it could possibly cure in two to three hours,” says Cody Lorenzen, general manager for Blackline. “If it’s really shady, it could be four or five hours, maybe even longer.”

For more information about the City’s Street Preservation Program, go to www.kirklandwa.gov.