CHAPTER XV

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METHODS AND COST OF CONSTRUCTING SIDEWALKS, PAVEMENTS AND CURB AND GUTTER.

Next to pavement foundations the most extensive use of concrete in street work is for cement walks and concrete curb and gutter. Usually the mixing and placing of the concrete is hand work, practically the only exceptions being where pavement base, curbing and sidewalks are built all at once, using machine mixers. The same objections that have been raised to machine mixers in laying pavement foundation are raised against them for curb and walk construction, and owing to the much smaller yardage per lineal foot of street in walk and curb work these objections carry more force than they do in case of paving work. Another argument against the use of mixers is that both walk and curb and gutter work involve the use of forms and the application of mortar finish, the placing of which are really the limiting factors in the rate of progress permissible, and this rate is too slow to consume an output necessary to make a mixer plant economical as compared with hand mixing where so much transportation is involved. Concrete sidewalk and curb work are essentially hand mixing work; they, therefore, involve a careful study of the economies of hand mixing and wheelbarrow haulage which are fully discussed in