Putting in an 800' driveway through the forest, advice and tips needed.

   / Putting in an 800' driveway through the forest, advice and tips needed. #1  

Piston

Elite Member
Joined
Sep 28, 2008
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Location
New England
Tractor
Kubota L4610 Hitachi UH083LC
I have a roughly 800' driveway to put in for our future home. The land was logged in the '70's and left unmaintained since then. There are a lot of pines as you can see from the pics, and some hardwoods. most trees are small, barely sawlogs. Many of the hardwoods are just saplings (small to large) so there is a good mix of trees in there but nothing overly large.

From the reading I've done on this forum, I've come up with a basic plan.

Design a driveway that takes advantage of the natural openings in the land, although there aren't too many 'openings' just some areas with less trees.

Go in with a backhoe and knock down all the trees that are in my future driveway, uprooting them in the process, then pile them off to the side....I plan on cutting the stumps off, limbing them, and saving any decent pines for my portable sawmill, and saving any hardwoods over 4" for firewood.
I'm not sure yet if I will have the brush mulched, or if I will burn it.

Then go though with my 46hp tractor and boxblade, with the scarifiers all the way down, and loosen up the soil down to 5" (the lowest my scarifiers go).
THEN, come back with the backhoe and dig up that 5" of top soil for the whole length of the driveway.
After that, I'll see if the remaining soil looks more like gravel, or more like soft organic topsoil still, and if it's still topsoil, I'll repeat loosening the soil down another few inches, and remove more soil again.

From there, I guess I'm not really sure what to do. Is there any chance that I could get lucky by digging out the topsoil and be left with decent gravel? And not have to add more gravel to the driveway?

I was thinking of instead of making a crown in the driveway to shed water, I would put a 4% slope in the entire driveway, following the natural contour of the land and have the water shed down the side of the driveway, which would be to the north in the pic. (north up)

What do you think of this plan? My equipment is what is listed in my signature.

How long do you think it would take to put in a rough driveway like this? 2 days, a week, 2 weeks? or longer?

If I have to add a bunch of gravel to the driveway when I'm done, I plan on putting down geotextile fabric first, and laying down the gravel over that.

The driveway will be approximately 800-850 feet long. I put in 10' contours on the map, there is a block with 2' contours where the house will be.

I'm looking for opinions or advice and tips from all you pros to make my job a little easier. I've put two different driveway routes on the map, The blue one will have slightly more elevation change but will go past some interesting features in the land, and also be easier since the woods are a lot thinner there.
The red one will be less elevation change, straighter, but doesn't seem 'natural' with the land, because I will have to take out so many pines.

I have a lot of time on my hands and want to do the driveway rough work myself, I don't mind getting help when I need it and if that is the case I will rethink my plan, but I want to take advantage of the equipment I have, and improve my skills using that equipment.
The land is in the lakes region of NH where we get a decent amount of snow. It is on the north side of a mountain but not so far down to where I won't get sun in the winter. It just won't be beating on the driveway.
 

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   / Putting in an 800' driveway through the forest, advice and tips needed. #2  
One of the more important points you stated is:
"I have a lot of time on my hands and want to do the driveway rough work myself, I don't mind getting help when I need it and if that is the case I will rethink my plan, but I want to take advantage of the equipment I have, and improve my skills using that equipment."

I'm of a similar nature and I believe you do have the equipment to get the job done, it may just take a little longer (adding a dozer would make it faster). You are in NH so it's fairly rocky there however the few questions I would have is: how far down until you hit solid ground? To do it right, you want all topsoil out of there and it sounds like you know this. My property is very rocky but of course where the driveway started from the road, only 20 feet in and we had to remove 24" of topsoil for about 25ft or so and fill with pitrun. What about any rock formations that may turn out to be boulder formations and too big for your equipment? You may need a plan for that as you never know until you start digging what you find.

I would go with the driveway outlined in blue, it takes advantage of the property layout better IMHO. Time to get it done depends on many factors. I would give yourself a week fulltime to get in there and rough up the trail. Then go back over it removing debris, etc. and starting digging down, give that another 3-5 days depending on what you find. Then come back and put in gravel or pitrun as a base, 1-2 days if you have it delivered and dumped, you're just spreading it. Then fine gravel can be delivered and spread by the truck, half a day. These are all just rough times and it's better to overestimate than not.

Just curious, are you going off the grid? That is my assumption based on the location you are indicating on your map. What are your plans, very curious. By the way, you may get more responses if you had posted this in the 'Projects' forum as it has a lot more traffic.
 
   / Putting in an 800' driveway through the forest, advice and tips needed. #3  
Piston, Have you considered what it will be like driving on an ice covered sidehill if you pitch the entire drive downhill ?? I'd crown it with uphill ditch & culverts. Miked74T
 
   / Putting in an 800' driveway through the forest, advice and tips needed. #4  
Crowning is usually the best way to shed water off a road it basically divides the water shed in half so not only is the water on your road for half the amount of time it divides the shed so erosion to the surrounding property is decreased. The less saturation to your road the faster it dries etc etc.
 
   / Putting in an 800' driveway through the forest, advice and tips needed.
  • Thread Starter
#5  
Kyle,
No I will not be off grid. I will either run power poles or go underground for power, depending on what I find when I dig as well as the cost. Power will be very expensive and that is one of the reasons I'm trying to do the driveway myself-to save some money and put that towards power.
Although, I am orienting the house for maximum southern exposure in case I want to add solar panels in the future.

Mike,
That's a great example of something I didn't think of and the very reason I posted, so thank you. I never even thought of the ice buildup when considering crown vs. Single slope.
 
   / Putting in an 800' driveway through the forest, advice and tips needed.
  • Thread Starter
#6  
WestshoreConstruction said:
Crowning is usually the best way to shed water off a road it basically divides the water shed in half so not only is the water on your road for half the amount of time it divides the shed so erosion to the surrounding property is decreased. The less saturation to your road the faster it dries etc etc.

Westshore,
Thanks for more good points and even more reason to build a crown in the drive. I guess that brings me to drainage issues especially on the uphill side of the driveway.
Would you recommend anything in particular for drainage?
I'm sure there are many of threads regarding drainage so I'll do some searching.
I believe I could cut decent drainage ditches with my box blade but if not, I could use the backhoe.
 
   / Putting in an 800' driveway through the forest, advice and tips needed. #7  
If you are planning underground power. Clear a nice easement along side your driveway for the power company.

Our last house was 535' off the road in the trees. The utility company mounted the transformere at the house end of the drive and used the cleared area along the drive for the underground. It was the path of least resistence for them, and it was awful nice knowing exactly where they buried the 4800 volt feeders.
 
   / Putting in an 800' driveway through the forest, advice and tips needed. #8  
Renting a dozer with a 6 way blade will make things much easier. While it won't give you the results a motor grader would, it will make putting a crown on the drive much easier.

I would get some estimates of having it done before you start just to give you a base line price. Around NC, grading work is so slow that I can have it done for about the same I would have invested to do it myself. I'm going to have my 3350 ft drive recrowned in a few weeks. Finishing up construction on the house and going to touch things up before putting the expensive gravel on. I checked on renting a dozer and doing it myself. A local guy is bringing his grader out and doing it for less that I can rent the dozer and it will only take him a few hours.
 
   / Putting in an 800' driveway through the forest, advice and tips needed. #9  
I like the blue route - curves are better more interesting, also as its is clearer for sun and as milkman said clear enough for the power line whether underground or poles. I would think 24-30' wide which may seem like a lot, but this will allow the sun in more than a narrow lane.

Also, you can landscape / grass in the side of the drive and mow it and you have a place for snow in the winter. If you make it say 18' the canopy and forest will creep back in pretty fast.

You will have rock and ledge so use the rocks as riprap on the sides and arourd any culerts or to fill in around ledge areas as needed once you get the grade where you want it. Then rent a compactor or have someone compact the stone once down

I would also get as much topsoil piled up on from this project near your house for your future garden/grass etc as dirt is expensive - you can screen it as you need to later.

From the looks of this I would say about 3 weeks to a month to remove the trees, put in the stone base and grade / finish the side grading and have a good road.
 
   / Putting in an 800' driveway through the forest, advice and tips needed. #10  
Another consideration for width is tree branch growth. Tree branches will chase newly available sunlight and grow in toward your drive. Trimming branches will become an annual task if the drive is too narrow.

Talk to the utility provider and ask them what width they would need on the side of your new driveway, then plan to leave yourself a comfortable tractor width on the other side between any tree branches and the drive.

My drive was 12' wide with one 5' mower pass on the short side, and three passes on the utility side. It took two round trips to mow the entire length, and one round trip for snow removal with the 8' blade.

Delivery trucks will also appreciate not swatting through branches as they drive in while your building.
 
 
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