It will take a little longer for a portion of a downtown Aiken street to reopen.
The portion of South Boundary Avenue closed due to a sinkhole could reopen Thursday afternoon or Friday morning, S.C. Sen. Tom Young Jr., R-Aiken, said Thursday morning.
The portion of South Boundary Avenue that's closed is between Whiskey Road and York Street.
Young said he was told by the South Carolina Department of Transportation that it's taken longer than expected to use flowable fill – concrete – to fill the hole due to the temperatures outside.
Concrete cures best between 70 and 80 degrees, Stevens Engineering and Concractors said in a blog post.
It has been between 70 and 80 degrees during the day, but temperatures have dropped into the 40s at night.
Curing slows as the temperature drops below 50 degrees and doesn't really happen at all below 40 degrees, according to PowerBlanket.com.
The flowable fill has to cure and then the contractor has to put down a layer of asphalt, Young continued. This process could be completed Thursday afternoon or Friday morning, he added.
The previous date for reopening was Wednesday afternoon or Thursday morning.
The department of transportation closed South Boundary between Whiskey Road and York Street late Thursday night after a contracting company discovered a sinkhole.
A heavy piece of equipment sank and fell into a hole between 4 p.m. and 5 p.m. March 7 and had to be removed by crane, Aiken City Manager Stuart Bedenbaugh said last week.
The cause of the sinkhole has not been provided.
However, Young said the cause was not a pipe failure.
The South Boundary Avenue closure is the latest road closure in the area. Two nearby bridges across railroad tracks on Fairfield and Union Streets are also closed.
In 2020, workers found another sinkhole on South Boundary Avenue between Whiskey Road and Chesterfield Street and the road was closed for weeks to allow for repairs.
The Laurens Street and York Street bridges were also closed several years ago to allow replacement and repairs.
