RDrancher's Photo Thread

[swick1]

Looking good! Btw: I'm doing a project where I need to build a very small detention pond. It's 8 ft by 25 ft by 6" at the shallowest point and 15" at the deepest point. The gutters and a French drain tie into it. Would this be called a detention basin? Water will soak through it into the ground. There is no outlet.

[LJH]

Cool! Is that your Pete & pup?

BTW, where I come from rip rap is a whole lot bigger, like, small boulders & takes an extra-heavy gauge truck bed as not to leave big divots. And it still will if the loader operator lacks finesse. Slight thread drift, sorry - harkening back to my glory days.

[RDrancher]

swick1 - Sounds more like an open soak pit than a retention pond. If you dig it deeper and fill it partially with clean gravel it'll help it to soak into the soil better.

LJH - Not my Pete but I wish it was!

I size the rock for the job. Since I do a lot of the smaller stuff I use a lot of 4-8" rock. Back in the old days we used to place a lot of the large rip rap you mentioned and pump concrete between the boulders for containment banks. Some of the drivers that didn't have rock boxes would line the bed floors with wet clay to keep down the divots. It didn't work that well. I guess that they really needed the work!

BTW, I don't mind thread drifts at all.

[DT86]

About that border... Is it to keep the edges neat? I just can't understand why they require it??

[RDrancher]

From what the code violation lacky told me, its to keep grass from creeping into the driveway. Guess they've never seen it grow in the center?

The City is really on a roll handing out violations for fences and driveway / parking areas. A lot of folks getting the violations really can't afford to repair anything in this crappy economy. Maybe someone should get a petition going to cite the City for potholed roads and missing street signs.

[two_bit_score]

[QUOTE=RDrancher;3055412]From what the code violation lacky told me, its to keep grass from creeping into the driveway. Guess they've never seen it grow in the center?

The City is really on a roll handing out violations for fences and driveway / parking areas. A lot of folks getting the violations really can't afford to repair anything in this crappy economy. Maybe someone should get a petition going to cite the City for potholed roads and missing street signs.[/QUOTE]


Amen!

We could probably start a very active thread on idiotic code enforcement decisions.

But, back to your work. You make doing excellent work look easy. That attests to your excellent ability.


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[RDrancher]

Started working on the upper driveway and parking area today.

Here's where the road will be located. I pulled out an old slab that wrapped around a propane tank and hauled it off to the crusher.


Removed the fence and started up the hill.


Benching in the parking pad.

[RDrancher]

The ground is more sandstone than dirt and a pain to grade. I wasn't too happy with the looks of the slope either.


I decided to dig out next to the slope and sift through the junk, hoping that I would create enough decent dirt to dress up the slope and compact the area where I would be cutting a swale. While digging it out I hit some nice decomposed sandstone / clay mix, so I hogged it out and made a stockpile. Then I dressed up the slope, cut the swale and compacted the area back in.

[LJH]

The ground is more sandstone than dirt and a pain to grade. I wasn't too happy with the looks of the slope either. I decided to dig out next to the slope and sift through the junk, hoping that I would create enough decent dirt to dress up the slope and compact the area where I would be cutting a swale. While digging it out I hit some nice decomposed sandstone / clay mix, so I hogged it out and made a stockpile. Then I dressed up the slope, cut the swale and compacted the area back in.

Stoopid newbie question -

So, that beautifully smooth & graded sifted material in the last picture is covering up the extra-chunky stuff in the first picture, right? Pray tell, how did you sift it? 'Cause I need to do something very similar in an equally rock-rich area. Backdragging it either bounces the bucket or digs furrows with the chunks (and of course, I don't know WTH I'm doing, that always helps ).

[DT86]

Sorry if I missed this but is that your Kubota? Either way how do you like it? I've not had the chance to run one but the cabs seem like they are a mile wide. If I ever bought one I'd look hard at the Kubota and the one armed JCB.