CUT Box Blade Newbie - Road Pictures

[Obed]

These pictures are after we had some rain. The road is really soft so tire tracks made quite an imprint at this time.

[Solo]

Nice job on the road. How long did it take to complete?

Solo

[Thomas]

Afternoon Obed.
I say you got the hang of road repair also ditching,did you by chance make couple of passes in the ditch to pack loosen dirt....might help to stay in place if there another heavy rain.

[Obed]

We got a lot of rain immediately after I graded the road. My next visit to the property depressed me. The road was very soft and sloppy. I was concerned that the road would be too wet to use all winter.

However, a few days later the road seemed much better and firm enough to drive on. After we've had a few dry days I intend to drive my truck up and down the road several times to pack down the dirt. I believe doing so will help a lot. I can already tell a big difference in the parts of the road that have a few tire tracks on them.

After the road packs down a bit I'll have some gravel delivered. As you can see from the "before" pictures, I had a good bed of gravel on the road before I dragged dirt from the roadside to fill in the rut. Now there's a lot of soft dirt on the road on top of the original gravel.

I'm not sure exactly what kind of gravel to get. Maybe I should get some big gravel initially. After the big gravel packs down some, then maybe I should get some crushed gravel. Any body have any suggestions?

[Obed]

The pictures that I've been posting show the entire width of the road from ditch to ditch. I don't entend to gravel the entire 15 feet of width between the two ditches. I'll just gravel the middle.

[Obed]

Here are some "before" pictures of the lower section of the road. The first picture shows a section of the road looking from above. Notice the rut on the left side. The second picture shows the same section of road when viewed from the opposite direction. I placed a board over the rut in the last two pictures for perspective.

[Obed]

Here are some "after" pictures of the lower section of the road. The last two pictures are the bottom of the lower section looking uphill from the opposite direction.

On the lower section I did not drag much dirt from the roadside to fill in the rut like I did on the upper section. First of all the rut in the lower section of road wasn't as deep as the rut in the upper section. Secondly the lower section rut was close to the side of the road. Thirdly, the road on the lower section was higher on one side of the road than the other side of the road. This lack of a crown was causing all the water to run to the low side of the road and thus make the low side of the road even lower.

I decided to scrape the gravel from the high side of of the road diagonally across over to the low side. After filling in the rut on the low side I ran up and down the road to work on the crown. The high side of the this section of the road was really packed hard, much like concrete. Removing gravel from the high side of the road wasn't real easy. I had trouble getting much bite with my box blade.

This section of the road still isn't the way I want it but is still much better than it was. I don't want one side of the road higher than the other side. I have more work to do to get the crown and the ditches right.

[Obed]

The first picture is the same as an earlier "before grading" picture I posted. Look at that tree on the right side of the road. This tree causes a "zig-zag" in the road and makes it very difficult to get my 22 foot trailer on and off of the property. This tree has to go! However, I have to remove the stump with the tree so I can straighten the road. The second picture shows the size of the tree at the base.

Removing this tree is going to be its own project in itself so I might post another thread as I attempt the job with my 28 HP John deere with FEL and backhoe.

[Obed]

Nice job on the road. How long did it take to complete?

Solo

The upper section (150 feet) took 4 hours to do. The lower section (150 feet) took 2 hours for a total of 6 hours for the entire 300 feet.

[Obed]

Afternoon Obed.
I say you got the hang of road repair also ditching,did you by chance make couple of passes in the ditch to pack loosen dirt....might help to stay in place if there another heavy rain.

No. I didn't think of that. Thanks for the great suggestion. I'll do that when it's dry enough.