Boxscraper for potholes - technique?

[DetroitTom]

Perhaps this has been covered before - if so, sorry in advance.

I live on a gravel road and sometimes need to fill in some potholes between county maintenance. My box scraper can't take the road down a couple of inches like a road grader (surface is too hard, tractor too small) - so I just drag the scraper along and the box fills with loose dirt and gravel. As I pass over a pot hole the loose dirt falls into the hole and is scraped level as the back edge passes over the hole. But the loose dirt packs down with the first pass of a tire over it, so there is a depression again, though more shallow. If I do repeated passes the hole gets more and more shallow, but never is gone, and the first rain starts the process over again.

Any tips on doing a more thorough job of filling pot holes? Thanks.

[Lasgambler]

Hi Tom, The way you are filling the holes will work. It will help if you can get some moisture in the dirt so it will compact better. Maybe over fill the bad ones with moist dirt and gravel and use something like a 8000 lb Powerstroke Deisel to compact the holes you have filled. Good luck.

[rdln]

I am leery of messing with public property like that, too manysue happies out there.

Call and beech about the roads...its your duty as a taxpayer.

otherwise, besides playing with top link angle to get the best bite, cant see what else you can do.

I'' bet you live in oakland county..terrible RC

[browns40]

Hi Tom,

At the root of every pothole is poor drainage--compaction, a depression, and usually a big rock or two...

Getting that material in & around the hole broken up with your scarifiers will address the compaction, raise some substrate to move around once your scarifiers are up/back, and sometimes extract large "culprit" rocks that just plain block water from moving.

Then you need to compact the material a bit, and add a bit more until the depression is no longer.

Order is: 1. Loosen & refill holes (as above)
2. Scarify road surface to be redone/loosen substrate --OR/THEN--
3. Grade as you've described above (if box will take dirt)

Keeping an eye on the crown/slope of the road sections prior to starting gives you a guide for order to approach refreshing the crown/slope if it has been deficient in some areas.

I would also be very leery about messing with a public road...

[jmfox]

I agree that assuming liability for a public road is not a good idea. In my experience holes in dirt roads are not about missing dirt but soft dirt below. The fix is digging them deeper and filling with something hard.

jmf

[Ken Cunningham]

If the material that you are picking up with the bb is just loose sand, then the tires of the cars will just push it aside when they run over it. I have plenty of sand that is loose just like mason sand, it will not hold up under the weight of a vehicle.

[john_bud]

gravel roads are built up of a mixture of different sized stones and sand so that the mix will compact down tight. If you can get a pickup load of it you can spot fill.

As others have said, the root of the problem is often 2-3' down where an old stump is rotting away or a flat rock sits allowing water to pool. So, you may never get "done", it's always a chore.

jb

[DetroitTom]

Thanks for the replies. I feel better knowing that I'm probably doing all I can with my small tractor (B7100) . The road is in a subdivision with a cul de sac at the end, so traffic is light.

[John_Mc]

Browns40 gave good advive. I'll add some along the same line:

First, if you want any repairs to last, you've got to get the water to drain of the road and hopefully well away from it. If you look at where teh potholes are forming, you'll probably see it's at a flat spot in the road, or the bottom of a dip. Some work on drainage ditches, grading a crown or side slope, or other techniques are well worth the time. Once it's off the roadbed, look to get the water away from the edge of the road a bit, or work to prevent water from getting to it in the first place.

As far as working on the potholes themselves, the repair will last much longer if you break down the surrounding area to below the level of the bottom of the pothole, then regrade the whole area. Don't think of it as filling the hole... as you've seen, that just doesn't last. Think of tearing down the whole area (not just the hole), then building it back up.

This can be tough. You'll probably have to use the scarifiers. You may need to add weight in addition to the usual messing around with the toplink length to set the angle. If you are just not getting penetration, try lowering just a few of your scarifiers, instead of all of them. This will concentrate the weight on those few that are down and help break things up a bit.

[wedge40]

I'd be careful, if you start to do a good job the county may stop working on YOUR road. The squeaky wheel gets the grease. I'd call and tell them that you've ruined your front end alignment or even broken the seal on a tire and see if they can fix the road, Oh,and threaten to send them the bill for the tire and alignment.

Wedge