Perma-Zyme is a natural soil stabilizer that binds soil into a hard, concrete-like surface that resists water, erosion, and dust. So, how does it work? We’ll answer that question and more in this blog! By the time you’re done, you’ll know what Perma-Zyme is and how you can use it to solve your toughest soil challenges.
Perma-Zyme uses enzymes, which are microscopic proteins that cause chemical reactions to start, speed up, or slow down. For instance, digestive enzymes in your stomach help your body break down food faster so you can get nourishment. In Perma-Zyme’s case, the enzymes cause soil particles to chemically react with each other so they bind together and harden.
Perma-Zyme treated soil becomes up to 10 times stronger than untreated soil. On r-value strength tests, treated soil scored in the mid 90s—higher than Type II aggregate and nearly as high as steel.
This durable surface can withstand all types of traffic with little to no rutting, washboarding, or maintenance. It’s also water-resistant, so treated soil is less susceptible to potholes, frost damage, and erosion. Finally, it holds soil particles together to decrease dust.
Most people use Perma-Zyme to stabilize unpaved roads like county roads, access roads, logging roads, and private drives. It also creates a durable subbase for paved roads. Since Perma-Zyme strengthens soil that’s already in the roadbed, it reduces or eliminates the need for material hauling, saving you up to 80% on construction.
Extraction companies use Perma-Zyme to stabilize drilling and equipment pads. Before they tried Perma-Zyme, one customer’s oilfield pad was so muddy that they had to use a D6 bulldozer to drag their tanker trucks to and from their storage tanks. Now, the trucks can drive to the tanks, fill up, and drive away—and the dozer is free for other projects!
Other folks use Perma-Zyme for dust control—especially on dirt roads, solar farms, and mine sites. You can also use it for pond linings, landscaping, and even more projects.
How long Perma-Zyme lasts will vary by project. So, let’s talk about the three biggest factors that influence its lifespan: project type, traffic, and application.
We make Perma-Zyme to stabilize your soil for longer with less maintenance. We’ll compare unpaved roads, paved roads, and dust control so you can see how project type impacts its lifespan.
Most customers grade unpaved Perma-Zyme roads just one to four times per year, although one Montana county went more than three years without grading. The concrete-like surface is also long-lasting: a customer in Michigan has an 11-year-old Perma-Zyme road, while a customer in California has one that’s lasted 16 years.
Paved roads often last longer because the pavement protects the soil’s surface. Since Emery County, Utah, treated a two-lane road with Perma-Zyme in the mid 1990s, the subbase has remained in excellent condition with only minor repairs to the pavement.
Dust control has a shorter lifespan than road stabilization, since traffic can scratch the top layer of treated soil and produce minimal dust over time. (Don't worry—it's still way less than an untreated road!) Laramie County, Wyoming, used to apply chlorides to CR-136 every eight weeks; after Perma-Zyme, the road went eight months without chlorides. Other roads across the country have lasted two, three, and even four years with no dust control since applying Perma-Zyme.
Perma-Zyme helps your soil withstand both heavyweight and high-volume traffic. As you’d expect, these traffic types wear on the road surface more than lightweight or low-volume traffic.
For heavyweight traffic, it’s no secret that a huge haul truck weighs more than a pickup. So, a county road that gets mostly residential traffic will likely last longer than a mining road that sees mostly heavy trucks and equipment. Even still, our extraction customers have had drilling pads last years with minimal maintenance thanks to Perma-Zyme.
Traffic volume can also impact your project’s lifespan. Less traffic means less wear and tear—which means longer lasting results. So, many customers use Perma-Zyme to make high-volume roads more durable. Like this one: Main Street in Apple Valley, Utah, sees up to 1,000 cars per week. The county had to grade it weekly to keep up; they even parked their grader onsite! But after using Perma-Zyme, they went over two months without grading. That’s a huge savings in labor, fuel, and machine maintenance. Check out Main Street after its transformation:
How you apply Perma-Zyme makes all the difference to its lifespan. Customers who use it for topical applications (usually for dust control) have to touch up their soil more often than those who do full-depth applications (at least six inches deep).
For full-depth applications, compaction is the key to the process. The better you compact the soil, the closer you’ll push the particles together and the stronger the bond between them will be. One way to achieve maximum compaction is watering your soil to reach its optimum moisture content. That's the state at which soil is wet enough to compact easily, but not so wet as to be muddy. If soil is too wet or too dry, it won’t compact enough to bind into that hard surface you want.
The other key is to keep compacting soil until is completely finished. Stopping compaction too early can result in a looser bond and leave your soil vulnerable to potholes, washboarding, and other erosion. You’ll know compaction is done when you see small rocks on the surface start to break under the roller drum, rather than sinking into the soil.
Perma-Zyme is 100% natural and non-toxic. That’s because our founder, John Battistoni, believed the world needed more sustainable, eco-friendly products. And we’ve stayed true to that legacy! Like all of our products here at Substrata, Perma-Zyme’s active ingredients are enzymes that occur naturally in living organisms like yeast and bacteria. The other ingredients in Perma-Zyme are a trade secret, so we can’t tell you exactly what they are. But, we can tell you that they’re organic. In fact, 70% of them are food-grade materials.
The great thing about our enzymes and other ingredients is that they don’t contain any harsh chemicals. So, Perma-Zyme is safe to use near people, pets, plants, livestock, and water. It doesn’t build up toxicity in the environment like chlorides and other traditional options. Perma-Zyme is also non-corrosive, so it’s safe for vehicles and bridges, too.
Finally, we manufacture Perma-Zyme and our other products here in the U.S., using green manufacturing processes that are safe for our workers and our community. Our goal is to make the world a better place—and that includes keeping our carbon footprint small.
Perma-Zyme is a soil stabilizer that binds soil particles into a hard, concrete-like surface. Treated soil is better at resisting water, erosion, and dust, so you get results that last longer with less maintenance.
Our customers have used Perma-Zyme for projects including road construction, dust control, oil and gas drilling pads, pond linings, and everything in between. They’ve had projects last upwards of two, 10, or even 30 years with little to no maintenance. (Results vary by project type, traffic, and application.) And on top of it all, Perma-Zyme is 100% eco-friendly and sustainable.
So, why wait? Let’s start your Perma-Zyme project!