Fired Road contractor. Build it myself?

[WoodChuckDad]

Start here for your soil survey maps: Web Soil Survey - Home There's a ton of info on the soils for your property.

Fantastic. Thank you.

 

[LD1]

Informative maps.....but I just dont find them useful.

Perhaps I just dont understand them. But there are literally a dozen different soil "types" within 1 mile of my house. All of them called _________ silty-loam.

And for the blank, fill in a nearby town/township. IE: bennington silty loam, croton silty loam, centerburg silty loam, amanda silty loam, etc etc etc. Reading the description and they all read about the same too.

And I can tell you, after digging probably 50 holes and several hundred feet of trenches in all the fields around.......there are areas on the map that they show the soil being the same.....and I can tell you they are NOT. There are also areas they list as different, but I can assure you the soil structure is the same.

Heck, at my old house they list "condit silt loam" for where I dug my pond. HAd about 4" of topsoil and from there down 8' was nothing but 100% black/dark grey waxy clay. The kind that sticks to the shovel and boots and just refuses to come off. They list that same stuff in several areas around me now and I can assure you, we have none. All we have is the light to moderatly dark brown clay. Its sticky, but nothing like the black stuff. Some areas have rocks and what I would consider to be more sandy/loamy....as the dirt dont pack together and stick in the bucket, or to shoes and shovels. But its mostly brown clay in this area.

So.....take those maps with a grain of salt. They are basically estimations of what they think the soil type is in your area. Nothing is gonna be better than being there first hand and seeing what you have in person.

 

[TemporaryKubotaOwnerMark]

This morning I texted him early and said we were not going to use him. He called within 5 minutes to smooth things. I said thanks but no. He texted me several times after that offering a discount and asking if he could make it right. I stuck to my gut and said no. IT was time for us to part ways.

Late to the thread, but just wanted to say you made the right call on that contractor. If he's flaky before he even starts work, he's not going to suddenly improve when he starts work and now has you by the short hairs.

As for doing it yourself, I don't know enough about building roads to comment, but I can say that there are very few things a contractor can do that a reasonably intelligent person with the right tools can't do as well, and nobody is going to give it as much care as you will.

My neighbor just had some drainage work done by a contractor. It's crap. I can do better, and have. I don't know if he's a crook or just stupid, but he's making a living doing that garbage.

Just because he has a contractor's license doesn't mean he can do better work.

 

[sdef]

Yep. Large scale maps of most types for anything are great for an overall look. But in my experience at the micro level are not as good.
Example: When I bought my property a few years ago, I knew it would be a troublesome piece to get septic approval, underground power installed and overall drainage. A few pics are attached of what I dealt with. A neighbor down the road built a basement access home on a hill side culminating at a large pond. They had no large rocks on their property. Mine looks like a glacier ended here and dumped its largest rocks in the front half of the property. Other neighbors also had no large rocks.

It appeared the original owners were unable to get septic approval as there were several backhoe pits dug at various locations at sites obviously not suitable. I made my initial try at septic approval and failed- twice. I then hired a soils engineer for a reasonable price and a track hoe. The soils engineer thought we may not be able to make a septic work and totally disregarded the front half of the property as it would not work. With his experience he directed the track hoe to various places and finally found the mother lode of septic drainage soil, which put the drain field ~ 200' down slope from the proposed home site which set on rock.

So my point is each site has its own unique soil conditions and a soils engineer can provide the exact information you need for a reasonable price.

 

[sdef]

Late to the thread, but just wanted to say you made the right call on that contractor. If he's flaky before he even starts work, he's not going to suddenly improve when he starts work and now has you by the short hairs.

As for doing it yourself, I don't know enough about building roads to comment, but I can say that there are very few things a contractor can do that a reasonably intelligent person with the right tools can't do as well, and nobody is going to give it as much care as you will.

My neighbor just had some drainage work done by a contractor. It's crap. I can do better, and have. I don't know if he's a crook or just stupid, but he's making a living doing that garbage.

Just because he has a contractor's license doesn't mean he can do better work.

Agreed. When my new custom built home was completed a year ago, the building contractor stressed that I not change the grading as it could damage the foundation, especially on my property of poor soil drainage. Made sense until the first few heavy rains showed the poorness of their work that turned our sidewalk at the front of the house into a pond site. So I documented for any potential future legal issues and regraded myself to my satisfaction. All documented with photos and emails.

I also looked at some driveways (375' - 550') they had done in my difficult area and none are near as well built as I did mine. Although they are all serviceable. YMMV.

 

[WoodChuckDad]

Yep. Large scale maps of most types for anything are great for an overall look. But in my experience at the micro level are not as good. Example: When I bought my property a few years ago, I knew it would be a troublesome piece to get septic approval, underground power installed and overall drainage. A few pics are attached of what I dealt with. A neighbor down the road built a basement access home on a hill side culminating at a large pond. They had no large rocks on their property. Mine looks like a glacier ended here and dumped its largest rocks in the front half of the property. Other neighbors also had no large rocks. It appeared the original owners were unable to get septic approval as there were several backhoe pits dug at various locations at sites obviously not suitable. I made my initial try at septic approval and failed- twice. I then hired a soils engineer for a reasonable price and a track hoe. The soils engineer thought we may not be able to make a septic work and totally disregarded the front half of the property as it would not work. With his experience he directed the track hoe to various places and finally found the mother lode of septic drainage soil, which put the drain field ~ 200' down slope from the proposed home site which set on rock. So my point is each site has its own unique soil conditions and a soils engineer can provide the exact information you need for a reasonable price. <img src="http://www.tractorbynet.com/forums/attachment.php?attachmentid=489902"/> <img src="http://www.tractorbynet.com/forums/attachment.php?attachmentid=489904"/> <img src="http://www.tractorbynet.com/forums/attachment.php?attachmentid=489905"/>

Wow, that is some really rocky land. You could easily break an ankle there.

 

[Industrial Toys]

I have a friend that is a contractor. Lots of equipment. He has let me down, and other friends too. But he has also come through for me.

It's a tough business. Weather, restrictions, breakdowns, employee issues and customers always want more done than they had specified. You can't just leave and say you will come back for the extra work. Some jobs just can't wait and take priority. It's impossible to make everyone happy. Plus, maybe you get tired of calling people to cancel an appointment, and then they want to know, well when? Well, you just don't know. People don't like that, but it's often the truth. It's not a nine to five office job.

I had my guy booked for this summer. He never did show up or call. That's OK, it actually suited me. Next year.

I don't envy those guys one bit. I have also found, that the more slack you cut them, the more reasonable they can be in cost.

 

[WoodChuckDad]

I have some time. My architect is reworking our plans. I can't break ground until spring for the foundation so I have a couple months to was into it. As long as the weather doesn't get too bad. I've been looking around and a 10 foot hydraulic blade will run me about 4500 used I would definitely get more use out of it. I will need that to get the ditch done properly. A land plane will have to wait. Getting a motor grader up there would probably be hard and expensive. I don't know where I would find one and I'm not sure how it would negotiate my switchback. Perhaps they are more nimble than they look.

 

[sdef]

I have some time. My architect is reworking our plans. I can't break ground until spring for the foundation so I have a couple months to was into it. As long as the weather doesn't get too bad. I've been looking around and a 10 foot hydraulic blade will run me about 4500 used I would definitely get more use out of it. I will need that to get the ditch done properly. A land plane will have to wait. Getting a motor grader up there would probably be hard and expensive. I don't know where I would find one and I'm not sure how it would negotiate my switchback. Perhaps they are more nimble than they look.

Something else I did which was instrumental to the overall success I had was to do all of the basic grading and of course tree removal. I also removed (dug out) all stumps instead of leaving them to rot later and cause soft spots. Once a stump is removed and then backfilled, you have a soft spot waiting to become a problem. Same thing when removing large rocks and backfilling.

So I prepped the area, filled in the soft spots- really very large holes with large rocks and then backfilled with existing clay. Then I had inexpensive slag (mill byproduct kind of like lava) hauled in and I spread several inches deep. I let the construction traffic beat the slag into the ground which really put a nice, hard base on it and also identified still soft areas I needed to add a load of 3" - 4" rock to. And this is where I now sit and am happy. The original goal was to put a finished layer on, maybe crusher run. But at this point I am not in any rush as what I now have works well and is solid. My Time is being spent on more important projects but will get back to the finish gravel layer one day.

 

[TemporaryKubotaOwnerMark]

Tt's a tough business. Weather, restrictions, breakdowns, employee issues and customers always want more done than they had specified. You can't just leave and say you will come back for the extra work. Some jobs just can't wait and take priority. It's impossible to make everyone happy. Plus, maybe you get tired of calling people to cancel an appointment, and then they want to know, well when? Well, you just don't know. People don't like that, but it's often the truth.

Too. Bloody. Bad. Boo hoo.

There is no excuse short of a genuine emergency for not calling when things go sideways. A contractor that doesn't call should be fired, first time, every time, unless there really was an emergency.

And poor planning is NOT an emergency.