Exposed road base - driveway construction question

[SirReal63]

Here you go Brent. I have filled in low spots and leveled as needed a few times.

This is for size reference.

 

[SirReal63]

This is what the main road looks like after many years of weather and vehicular traffic. It looks to be the same as what you are going to use for base. I am going to have to take my little tractor out and work on the main road but my list of chores is massive so it will have to wait.

Isn't is amazing how a little time, money and hard work can transform a piece of property? If you go back to the beginning of the thread I linked you can see what challenges we have had to overcome. Be thankful you do not have the cedar mess we started with. We had plenty of dead Oaks but fortunately there are lots of live and mature ones as well.

 

[ustmd]

I was hoping I could get some help planning my driveway construction. Searching didn稚 produce any answers to my specific situation but I read many posts about road construction and gained some great knowledge. Thanks TBN.

The initial portion of our driveway is going to be 12' x 200' and travels downhill at a 4-5% slope. The soil is high clay content and has a pretty high rate of shrink / swell. (So the soil reports says.)

For the road subbase, we will remove top soil down to 8 which is where the red clay begins. After the subbase is leveled and compacted we will be installing geotextile woven fabric. Then we will put 8 of 3肺1 crushed limestone for the road base. There is no fine materials in this rock. It will initially be compacted with loaded vehicles. My plan is to get this portion of road built so we can begin construction of the home site.

We hope to leave the road like this (no top coat) for the heavy construction equipment to drive on. Once construction is complete (could be up to a year) we plan to come back, add more base rock to any low spots, reshape, then add 4 of top coat gravel. For the top coat plan to use a 1 3/4" limestone road base aggregate (called city base in my area) containing a lot of fines. I may come back later and add a layer of small limestone gravel for apperance.

My question is, will I be doing any harm to my subgrade and road base by leaving it exposed to rain during home construction? Without the top coat, the water will easily enter the rock base and permeate the subbase. To help with drainage during this time, I plan to put a temporary drainage ditch at the end of the road so that water that makes it to the subbase will drain out and not collect.

Is this an OK plan or should I install a top coat before the big trucks drive on it?

Sorry for the long post, lots to explain. Thanks for any help.

Added a pic since everything is better with pics~
View attachment 410932

Hiya neighbor,

I am not a road expert either, but that will not stop me from offering advice--we do have a 3/4 mile road base road on similar clay soil with the same high level of elasticity (not sure if Coupland is on the Blackland Prairie). 4 of us share the road and we have maintained it for the last 15 years.

I am not sure if compacting the "raw" subbase after you remove the top soil will add any value. The soil engineers we used told us that attempting to compact the undisturbed clay was a waste of money. The clay soil was already so dense that it would not make a difference.

Also, I would be concern about putting the road base down over the crushed limestone. I am not directly familiar with the material, but my concern would be that the fines from the top layer of base would migrate down through the gravel. Keeping the fines locked in place is the key to keeping the road in good shape.

I would remove the top soil and just do the road base on the fabric for the build with plans to clean it up afterwards.

Good luck

 

[BigBassBrent]

It looks like your road is holding up well Jack. That's great and it's what we all hope for when starting these projects. Your road base has really formed a nice sheet in that last pic. As long as the water can shed off that surface, and it does not form any large cracks from a shifting subbase, it looks like it's going to hold up for a long, long time. That gives me a lot of confidence. Thanks for taking the time to snap pics and helping a fellow Texan out!

And yes, the feeling of accomplishment and pride gained from transforming basically nothing into some place you will spend the rest of your life is amazing and can't be described. I just wish I could have done it 15-20 years ago when I was younger and stronger!

I'm going to go back and read your whole project thread. I really enjoy learning from other peoples projects since I am new too most of this. Fortunately for us, at some point someone cleared most of the cedars for us. Now they are just in huge piles scattered around the property. They would be easy to burn if the person who did this wouldn't have mixed the dirt in with it when they were bulldozing. I am going to leave a few of the piles as wildlife habitat, but the ones that can be seen from the house and street will have to be burned. I attached pic of the one I plan to burn this weekend. There is an equal size pile touching the back side of the pile you see in the pic. Hopefully they will both be ash by Sunday evening.

I'll keep this thread updated as I progress. We are saving money for road materials now. We should be ready to move forward with putting rock down by mid-March.

Thanks again Jack.

 

[BigBassBrent]

Hiya neighbor,

I am not a road expert either, but that will not stop me from offering advice--we do have a 3/4 mile road base road on similar clay soil with the same high level of elasticity (not sure if Coupland is on the Blackland Prairie). 4 of us share the road and we have maintained it for the last 15 years.

I am not sure if compacting the "raw" subbase after you remove the top soil will add any value. The soil engineers we used told us that attempting to compact the undisturbed clay was a waste of money. The clay soil was already so dense that it would not make a difference.

Also, I would be concern about putting the road base down over the crushed limestone. I am not directly familiar with the material, but my concern would be that the fines from the top layer of base would migrate down through the gravel. Keeping the fines locked in place is the key to keeping the road in good shape.

I would remove the top soil and just do the road base on the fabric for the build with plans to clean it up afterwards.

Good luck

I drive through Manor every morning on my way to work! Small world. You just described my "revised " plan after posting this. That is what we are going to do. My soil is crockett loam and Axtell fine sandy loam. Anything that has not been compacted is super soft, like walking on memory foam. I appreciate the advice about compacting the raw clay. After I get the top soil out, we planned to try and drive on it for a month or so before laying the geotextile and road base. Hopefully I don't get stuck again, but at least this time I have the tractor to pull me out!

 

[SirReal63]

I hope it helps. One thing I am learning is to keep it as simple to maintain as possible. Layers of complication are not our friends. Your soil is very different from ours so I would recommend getting a couple quotes from people in your area who do it for a living. They will know what works and what doesn't. I would also advise the local coffee shop and reach out to the old timers in the area, they have the benefit of years of experience and seeing what has worked for others. We got lucky with the guy who did ours, 30 years in the area doing septic and roads.

Our little thread should be used for amusement only, we are learning as we go but so far we have not made any obviously bad decisions, just expensive ones.

 

[BigBassBrent]

Spot on Jack. We always try to employ KISS methodology. (Keep it simple stupid!) This project is a joint effort with my father. He retired about 5 years ago and wanted something to keep himself occupied so he offered to help the wife and I get set up on a rural property of our dreams. We are truly blessed. He grew up on farms and has a fair amount of construction experience. We are attempting to do everything we can without having to pay professionals. We have no restrictions on our place either, except for county approval of a few things. I'm sure we will make mistakes, waste money, and it's going to take some time, but the best part of this has been rekindling my relationship with dad though working on this project so closely. I am overly excited to finally have a reason to learn about construction since I am a computer nerd in my 9-5 life.

We are currently in Taylor and have a house on 3 acres in a neighborhood. It was quiet when we moved there about 7 years ago, but now a days, it's become the big city to me with cars blasting music up and down the street all times of day, increased crime, and drugs all over the place. Us finding this property couldn't have come at a better time. Our nearest neighbor in Coupland is a mile down the street. It is pretty darn quiet at our Mini Acres Ranch.

I am really enjoying your project thread. I am on page 7 or 8 right now. You have an awesome place and I cannot believe how great it looks after the cedar clearing. I will enjoy continuing to watch your progress.

 

[SirReal63]

Taylor was once a great little farming community, so was Bertram and for the most part Bertram still is but Austin is encroaching on us daily. We knew that would be the case and managed to find a place that was way off the beaten path and secluded. You would drive by our entrance road and never know that is was anything more than a farming access road. If you manage to find the road, you won't see our place because we left a green screen of cedars in place. Unfortunately the road gives it away now, but looking up the road you only see trees, not any structures, it still looks like a farming access road, just a nice one.

I understand your Fathers need to stay busy. I have been dealing with several health issues, not life threatening ones but ones that have forced me out of the workforce. Our little farm project is as much to keep me busy as it is our retirement plan. We are sick of subdivision life and the phony neighbors and crazy restrictions that come with it. We are fortunate that I do have the skillet to do most of the work here as that has saved us a ton of money. The things I cannot physically do or uncomfortable doing are easy to hire out.

We only had a few requirements, function over form, water no matter what happened and electricity no matter what happened and the ability to grow and raise our own food. The solar well and 3.3kW of solar power for the guest house will allow that. It has been a fun journey the past 8 months, and it has only just begun.

I hope you can find the time to start a thread on your progress. I started mine just to document in one place the transformation and as a way to gather information from others who have done this or know how to do the things I do not. TBN is an amazing resource and you will find there are many of us in the area.

 

[xzcVAbc5]

Now they are just in huge piles scattered around the property. They would be easy to burn if the person who did this wouldn't have mixed the dirt in with it when they were bulldozing. I am going to leave a few of the piles as wildlife habitat, but the ones that can be seen from the house and street will have to be burned. I attached pic of the one I plan to burn this weekend.

The piles that have a lot of dirt mixed in with them already would be good candidates to make a "hugelkultur" bed out of them. -Link-

I'm interested in making a hugelkultur bed with some wood that I have and some trees that need to go away. It will be a pistol/rifle range backstop. I'd also like to make some of the same beds and put them in my parents' windbreak with overlapping slots between them to catch the snow near the ground like a snow fence. The slots between them would make it so it's not a big bunker around the property.

 

[BigBassBrent]

Thats pretty cool. I have never heard of a hugelkultur bed but I can understand the concept since some of the piles I have look like they have already become hugelkultur beds. A few of them I am leaving as such. There are several animal burrows in them and they are growing plants already. One of the draws to this property is the wildlife, so I want to keep as much of their habitat in tact as possible. I like your idea!

Thanks for learning me something new!

The piles that have a lot of dirt mixed in with them already would be good candidates to make a "hugelkultur" bed out of them. -Link-

I'm interested in making a hugelkultur bed with some wood that I have and some trees that need to go away. It will be a pistol/rifle range backstop. I'd also like to make some of the same beds and put them in my parents' windbreak with overlapping slots between them to catch the snow near the ground like a snow fence. The slots between them would make it so it's not a big bunker around the property.