Redoing drive to chicken house

   / Redoing drive to chicken house #1  

Billc

Gold Member
Joined
Apr 6, 2000
Messages
357
Location
Northwest Georgia
Tractor
Kubota 5400 4x4 with ROPS, canopy, 1001 loader, heavy duty quick release bucket with tooth bar, 280 Bush Hog brush cutter, 6' Bush Hog box blade, 6' Bush Hog plug aerator, 3 point hay spear, 6' Lands
Had a fella call me out to redo the drive that leads to his chicken houses. His drive is Georgia clay very thinly covered with #5 gravel (stone that is about 1 to 2 inches in size).

His problem is pot holes. He has about 10 good sized ones (3 to 10 feet long by 2 to 3 feet wide) and lots of small ones. These pot holes hold water most of the winter and makes for a bumpy, muddy ride. He wants the pot holes to go away. He has tried filling in the pot holes with gravel, but the gravel washes back out due to truck traffic. He has tractor-trailers come down the drive on a regurlar basis to drop-off or pick-up chickens, plus delivery of food and supplies to raise the chickens.

He wants me to box blade his drive. I don't think this will work. First, his dirt drive has been packed over the years and is hard as rock. The ripping shankes on my box blade won't make a dent in the drive so there is no way to loosen the soil in order to level it out.

I told him that his best bet is to get a load of crush and run dumped on the drive or to hire someone with a large tracked dozier to level it. Which is his best option?

As always, thanks for the advice.

Bill Cook
 
   / Redoing drive to chicken house #2  
Bill,

You have a pretty good size tractor and if I remember right, a heavy box blade. If you can't break up that road it sounds like dozer work. It would seem to me, that he needs a dozer with 6 way blade to put a crown on the road and then regravel.

Hope you and yours had a great holiday season.

MarkV
 
   / Redoing drive to chicken house #3  
I'm certainly not an expert so starting from that firm foundation statement.... :cool:

Are you sure you can't bust the road up with the box blade? I have a road that timber trucks rolled over for a week or so. It held up real well until it rained just enough to saturate the ground and then the gravel got pushed into the road bed, ruts appeared, and potholes showed up. Of course this was all on the last day or two of the operation. If the rain had held of for a couple of days.....

I took the box blade when the road was dry, which is a no no, and did a fair job cleaning up some of the mess. I waited until it rained and really got the road wet. This allowed me to rip the gravel up from the clay and smooth out the ruts and potholes.

It looked like heck for a week or so until it rained some more. The road had not been maintained at all since it was built, great waste of some serious money, so trees and grass had grown all over the place. Part of the messiness of it all was the grass, twigs and such all over the gravel. There was also a bit of mud brought up with the gravel. I did not have the shanks down deep, maybe 3-6 inches. After everything was graded smooth it was like driving in sand for a few weeks. But after more rain washed the mud/fines down into the gravel everything really tightened up. The road is holding up to my driving my truck and tractor, not a heavy traffic to be sure, but it looks much better than it did. No more potholes or ruts.

I would think if that road gets wet you could rip it.

I would like to try that road! :cool: Sure wish it was near by! :cool:

Later...
Dan
 
   / Redoing drive to chicken house #4  
Bill, I did some driveway restoration for my parents years ago with a borrowed Kubota and box blade. I used the rippers to chew it all up then graded it smooth. We then put some fresh material on top of it all. It was damp when I ripped it. You really have to rip well into the pot hole to bring some "fines" back into the mix. It's the varied sizes of material that hold it all together. Just dumping some fresh material on top won't last long for the same reason (won't bind to the bottom of the pothole). Good luck.

Rob
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   / Redoing drive to chicken house #5  
Billc,
I have tried the same thing at my poultry farm. After about a 100-80,000 pound trucks a year, the box blade won't touch it. I finely just dumped a lot of creek gravel on the road. As the trucks started to pack it back down, I would move it around the way I wanted it.
JerryG
 
   / Redoing drive to chicken house #6  
Bill, I would vote for the road base, or crusher run as some folks call it. JerryG also has a good idea . No matter what he does, with that type of truck traffic, he will need to do some type of maintenance periodically. It sounds like What he has there now is not workable with resonable equipment. Redistributing it with a dozer may be OK for a while, but He will end up with the same thing he had before.I go into rock quarries, sand pits, and dirt pits all the time, and the roads are always a mess. With heavy trucks it's just a fact of life.

Ernie
"Do not be uneasy about me, I am among friends"
David Crockett 1836 (in a letter to his family)
 
   / Redoing drive to chicken house
  • Thread Starter
#7  
Thanks for all the good advice.

I went back out yesterday and looked at his drive. It is a muddy mess.

I told the fella his real problem is that he never maintained his drive in the first place. Because of that his drive will be expensive to fix. Also advised him to keep up with the drive after the work is done. And get this, he has a Kubota that is about the size of mine. No excuse for his drive to get this bad.

I don't think my box scrape can do a proper job, his road is too hard. My rippers can loosen the mud on top but not the hard pan that's 1/4 inch down.

Took several of y'alls advice, I told the guy to hire someone with a tracked dozer and start over. Have him recrown the drive like Mark said. Then to get some #5 rock down. #5 rock is 1/2 inch to an inch and goes much further than crush and run, therefore much cheaper. Once that is done all he needs to do is box the drive regularly and apply new #5 as needed. Last summer I built a road to my storage buildings out back using this method, except I used my box blade instead of a dozier.

As always, thanks to the brain trust, y'all are great!


Bill Cook
 
   / Redoing drive to chicken house #8  
Your idea about the crusher run limestone is probably a good one. His problem could likely be associated with the fact that his stone is basically one size (1-2") and doesn't have enough fine material to get proper compaction. The crusher run stone will have plenty of fine material less than 1/4" in diameter and also some larger 1-2" stone. This will set up like concrete after compaction, or at least this has been my experience.

Good luck with this project.

Boots
 
   / Redoing drive to chicken house #9  
Based on the advice in this thread and others, I'll be restoring my driveway in the spring.

Right now it is plain gravel (probably about #5 - i.e. no "fines") and is getting pretty well beaten down into the mud. After I use the ripper it up and crown it, I want to put a top "coat" of crusher run on it. We have that on the roads in my sub division and it does indeed nearly set up like concrete.

My questions are:
1) How thick should I make the crusher run layer
and
2) How do I figure out how much to order?

I know that L x W x Depth (all in feet) divided by 27 = cubic yards.

But the gravel company sells in "tons" not yards. How many tons of gravel = a yard. Does it vary by much depending on the type of gravel?

Thanks

WVBill
 
   / Redoing drive to chicken house #10  
 
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