Dirt Moving Building a road

[Daronspicher]

Curious what the limestone sells for delivered in your locale? With a turn around at the barn you are looking at about 225 yards of material. In my area in Mew Mexico the stone delivered would be about 25.00/yard, so this would be $6,000 with tax.

I was estimating without the turnaround in the calculations and will probably tack on 4 or 5 more dump bellies more so I have plenty to work with.

My spreadsheet was coming off at 205 yards with a delivered cost of $2207. We are about 5 miles from the quarry which probably helps a bit. I think that includes tax, but now that I'm revisiting the idea, I'm less than 100% sure on the tax. If it's not already in there, it would add on about $180 more maybe.

Sounds like we are getting off a little easy on this one.

-Daron

 

[jenkinsph]

Thanks for the information, I pay about 6/yd for engineered fill, 16/yd for 3/4 minus (base course) and 25/yd for3/4 crusher run. Works pretty well without much dust in our dry climate.

 

[EddieWalker]

What I keep thinking is that when you remove the top soil, you have created a ditch that will hold water. If you put rock in there to fill the ditch, it will hold water. There is not type of rock, or rock mix that will not hold water. If you use clean fill dirt, the same material you would use to build up a foundation of a house, and compact it, it will not hold water. You want the fill dirt to be above grade enough to shed water. Then you want your rock to go on top of that.

I don't understand why anybody would fill a trench with rock if they wanted to build a road? How are leach fields built? What creates a spring or water table? It doesn't matter what is around the rock, or how compact the rock is, it will hold water if it is below grade.

Eddie

 

[jenkinsph]

What I keep thinking is that when you remove the top soil, you have created a ditch that will hold water. If you put rock in there to fill the ditch, it will hold water. There is not type of rock, or rock mix that will not hold water. If you use clean fill dirt, the same material you would use to build up a foundation of a house, and compact it, it will not hold water. You want the fill dirt to be above grade enough to shed water. Then you want your rock to go on top of that.

I don't understand why anybody would fill a trench with rock if they wanted to build a road? How are leach fields built? What creates a spring or water table? It doesn't matter what is around the rock, or how compact the rock is, it will hold water if it is below grade.

Eddie

I assumed the OP was trying to save the topsoil for other uses. I agree that engineered fill would be ideal to build up the base of the road and I would skip the geo fabric expense in exchange for more fill to raise the road bed.

 

[drdoolittle]

As for why you'd dig a ditch and fill it with rock, then put a road on top - look up "french mattress". Where I live (Southern Louisiana) you put that it to allow the water in the soil to migrate under the road. It's similar to the concept of french drain except as big as a road. We don't always have elevations to drain around and the soil can be soft for miles under ground down here. Just building a new road up higher than surrounding land means in a few years it have migrated down. The french mattresses at leas seem to stabilize the road and keep it from sinking.

We had a 3.5 earth quake once and no one noticed because the "soil" - aka mud - absorbed most of the movement. LSU had to call it out based on there monitoring otherwise we'd have never known.

 

[vtsnowedin]

What I keep thinking is that when you remove the top soil, you have created a ditch that will hold water. If you put rock in there to fill the ditch, it will hold water. There is not type of rock, or rock mix that will not hold water. If you use clean fill dirt, the same material you would use to build up a foundation of a house, and compact it, it will not hold water. You want the fill dirt to be above grade enough to shed water. Then you want your rock to go on top of that.

I don't understand why anybody would fill a trench with rock if they wanted to build a road? How are leach fields built? What creates a spring or water table? It doesn't matter what is around the rock, or how compact the rock is, it will hold water if it is below grade.

Eddie

If the ditch is only the dept of the topsoil the water will be able to drain out through the topsoil on either side. The beauty of rock is even if it is under water it doesn't turn to mud and the loads from above get spread out from stone to stone and over a much bigger area of the clay at the bottom.