At 1,277 m, Pfronten in the Allgäu region is home to the highest castle ruins in Germany. A private road leads to it, which is also the lifeline for the Blaue Burg boutique hotel with its gourmet restaurant. The asphalt surface of the narrow hairpin bend was in urgent need of renovation. Hotelier and star chef Simon Schlachter relied on Josef Böck GmbH from Nesselwang, which specialises in asphalt paving and particularly demanding projects, to carry out the work professionally. Also involved is the brand-new Vögele SUPER 1800-5 X road paver with the AB 500 TP1 extending screed.
The tension among Managing Director Sascha Böck and his team during preparations for the brand-new road paver is literally in the air. He had already meticulously planned the operation with lorry test drives up and down the serpentine, backwards through the hairpin bends. You could feel how important today’s task was to him. Paver operator Tatjana Drexler and foreman Martin Köberle were quickly familiar with the new machine and the first metres of asphalt paving started from the hotel car park at 1,277 m. Contractor Sascha Böck personally lent a hand with the paving screed.
Construction site with many challenges
The road, which is just over 2 km long, is only up to 3 m wide in sections. “The construction site here has a lot of refinements. We are dealing with a steep gradient and very tight bends at the same time, which is a challenge for paving and logistics,” Böck describes the construction site situation. Due to the hairpin bends, only three-axle lorries can be used to deliver the mix. In addition, there are only limited passing places on the route to be negotiated and the lorries have to reverse along the serpentine for long stretches. It is also not easy to stand lightly on the brakes when idling, even on sloping terrain. The paving team is also very busy. On one side the mountain, on the other the steep slope. Here, the paver has to be steered precisely to avoid hitting anything on the narrow road. “This works very well with the new Dash 5 paver. Thanks to the perfect overview, sensitive steering via SmartWheel and precise screed width adjustment, high-quality paving is possible even in these demanding bends. The paver holds the track perfectly and we get an even paving pattern, which is not a matter of course with the existing poor stock and varying layer thicknesses. The screed’s pressure bar is very helpful in achieving high pre-compaction,” comments Sascha Böck after the first 500 m of asphalt paving with the new paver.
