Fixing potholes isn’t the sexiest way out of the recession.
But for Aziz Tejpar, an entrepreneur who runs a company that destroys drain grease in restaurants and hospitals by using live bacteria, pothole repair might just prove to be the best way.
“America is built on strip malls,” says Tejpar. “And strip malls have a lot of potholes.”
So Tejpar, president of Bradenton-based Environmental Biotech, has created a new franchise-model business to harness a technology he says will turn the staid industry of filling potholes into something efficient and entrepreneurial. Even better, says Tejpar, this system has no need for jackhammers and is environmentally friendly.
Tejpar calls the system, and the new company behind it, B Pothole Free. The technology revolves around a patented, infrared asphalt heater that is placed over a pothole.
Then, using short, medium and long wave thermal induction, the temperature is raised to 200 degrees Celsius, so heat permeates the entire pothole. The heater is removed after about 10 minutes and a two-man crew reshapes the area with the new road material.
The area is then compacted down and smoothed over while still hot. The entire process takes about 20 minutes.
B Pothole Free charges $99 for each standard size repair, which covers a pothole as big as 3 feet by 3 feet. It costs a county or municipal government about $250 to replace a pothole using traditional methods, says Tejpar, for a job that takes at least twice as long and usually requires twice as much manpower.
Ismailimail 