Rainwater washing out my NEW road

[rScotty]

HELP...!!!
I had a new road cut thru forest last Aug.
I fly airplanes for a living and know very little about roads.
SNIP.......
The contract called for an "all weather road with culverts and broad-based dips as required" I am pretty disappointed and need info on where to start.
Advise and comments would be appreciated.
Rob

Well, I can't fly an airplane, but I'm a pretty darn good and experienced engineer. At least you got some work done. I don't think that it is all a disaster. It just needs the second stage.

As far as the contract goes, it sounds like it was unrealistic for a finished road. I find it difficult to believe that someone didn't express that opinion right at the start. Getting that length of new road right the first time would be an enormous expense plus unknowable knowledge of the future and Xray vision too.

A govenment doing that sort of job can just throw money at it, but for an individual that's hard to do.

If it were a project I was in charge of I'd lean towards doing it in stages. First stage is basic and crude like you had done....then use it for a season or so. Next you get a real geotech engineer in there to make it right. I repeat: from the pictures you are showing us with the soil, the forest and the slope it would have been highly expensive and require a crystal all to get what you want the first time. Add to that: expensive. And even if you had thrown buckets of money at it there are bound to be trouble spots.

This may not be what you want to hear. Yes, the next stage is going to cost. It will require a real engineer, ditching, culverts, and it looks like it needs some geotextile too. But the good news is that you have the basic bit done. Now it's just a matter of getting it right.
rScotty

 

[City Dude]

Wow! And I thought I had issues! I was told that in the past 8 years no one ever saw our arroyo run with water. I have to build up the road to alow me to pull a 36' RV across. The contractor I hired said "the arroyo is there for a reason" and he suggested a culvert. I was not there at instal, but when I arrived, he had put only a single 12" culvert in. Oh well, only 92 more years before the "big flood"! One month later, the arroyo was running from side to side with the culvert carrying all the water it could! The rest flowed over the top washing out a segment of the crossing.
I marked the "standing" water levels and documented with lots of photos. Then went to work digging a new trench (level with the existing culvert) to place a much larger one to "help out" during the next "event". I also had someone shoot my levels and determined we had room to build up the road base crossing the arroyo. We have not had another 100 year flood yet, but there was enough of a rain to start the arroyo flowing again. Everything worked as planned and both culverts were pushing water through. Good luck with your project.
Retiring in New Mexico

 

[hebinwi]

Thanks boggen. This is an excellent post.

I have a very similar problem at my place in east Tennessee, but the hill is steeper and on bed rock. My problems will be solved by crowning and ditching I think. I already have culverts and the bottom. My problem is that the road is on the side of a hill and can't be 16' wide without moving a **** of a lot of dirt and blasting rock.

 

[Rich Waugh]

The key thing that too many people lose sight of is this:

Dirt work is NOT about dirt - it is all about WATER.

To make a road, you start by cutting a pair of ditches and putting what came from them in the middle. When you're finished making the ditches you grade and consolidate what is in the middle and then add sufficient graded aggregate base (GAB) to make a road.

3/4 mile of road for $10K? Unrealistically low by a factor of four, I'd say. That's if you want a real gravel road. To amend slightly what I said at the beginning, dirt work is not about dirt - it about water and money.:laughing:

 

[beppington]

... As far as the contract goes, it sounds like it was unrealistic for a finished road. I find it difficult to believe that someone didn't express that opinion right at the start.

... 3/4 mile of road for $10K? Unrealistically low by a factor of four, I'd say. That's if you want a real gravel road.

I also stated earlier that $10K didn't seem like enough ... But I'd also add: "A deal's a deal." He should get what the contract calls for.

 

[cjdavis618]

I was reading your post earlier this morning and have some drainage issues myself, but on flat ground.

Never the less I ran across this pdf file that discusses your issues with the road and how to plan for the drainage. Maybe this will help.

http://cetuolumne.ucdavis.edu/files/67116.pdf

Good luck and I hope you get the issue sorted out.

 

[rambler]

Interesting thread. My opinions, and only worth that:

Your contract was with the seller/developer, not with the contractor that did the roadwork. Not really fair for us to badmouth the contractor. I suspect he did what he was told to do for between $5-10,000 and tha's all he could do.

While there may be a reference to 'all-weather road' in law, it's a very open term, and will not stand up in court, and so it really has no meaning. You got a trail of some sort, so I think the terms of the contract were fullfilled legally, and you will be out of luck persuing this. Does your county or state have a minimum code as to the width of an access road to a dwelling? _That_ could possibly be used to get more work done, as your road is rather narrow. About the only way to try to follow this up legally, in my opinion.

It is very naive to think a 3/4 mile road can be built for $10,000. I spent almost that just getting gravel down on my 750 foot road & turn around yard several years ago. No grading at all. While 'a contract is a contract' at some point the buyer needs to be aware of the realities, and it would appear there is about $10,000 worth of road there, so again, in court this would not go too far. You got what you got, which is what you agreed to, which is a cheap road dug in to the place.

Once the road was made, it needs to be maintained. A fresh road needs traffic on it to pack it down (it is unrealistic to expect packing of a private road during construction when it is obviously done for cheap, when common practice is to allow traffic to pack such a private road), and it needs landscaping/ sodding/ seeding to hold the road ditches in place. A good argument can be made that this is _not_ part of the road building, but part of the maintenence of the road. I think the buyer really dropped the ball by not doing this part, not looking it over, not maintaining his road. Again, in court, this would be examined, and there would be a fair amount of fault on the buyer's side for not taking care of the road he was given. This stuck out from the very first message - why were these normal things not done???? Not driving on the road for months after having it freshly built is just a terrible thing....

As others say, all is not lost, you got a pretty good basic trail built in.

It needs the side ditches and some form of crowning, and then about 3x as much gravel hauled onto it, and then seed down the ditches with old straw to keep them from washing away. That might be another $15,000. A road grader could perobably do that from this point, and what I would look to hire. See if he can somehow save the dribble of gravel on top, perhaps he can push it to one side as he works over the ditch & crowning operations.

I think you would do very well if you got the 'developer' to kick in $5000, and you take on the rest. Going through court and all, I think you might come out worse than that, plus lose the lawyer fees. Don't really see you coming out that good either in court or just negociating, but who knows.

I will agree you did not get what you wanted or expected, and it should have been handled better than it was, a better road with real ditches should have been built.

But here you are, and the ball was dropped back in August when you agreed it was a good road and released the money; then you did nothing to maintain the road all winter, didn't even inspect it. Now it's pretty late in the game to get anywhere with that - think the court would say what's up with you?

Time to move on and get a good road built from the trail you have so far. They did a fair job, and you don't need _all_ the expensive stuff folks are mentioning.

You can expect to put $500 into the road every year after it is perfect - just grading the washboards and erosion back onto the crown, and adding gravel now and then. Normal maintenence.

You got messed with for sure, but you kinda set yourself up for it with unrealistic expectations and no follow through on your side.

Not good or right, but how it is, we've all been there, learn from your mistakes and don't dwell on it, enjoy what looks like a wonderful place. Wait until you start building the house, gonna be a dozen more 'little problems' like this that come along. Enjoy the ride.

--->Paul

 

[Boeing]

Thanks guys and PAUL..:ashamed:..I had to laugh at the "chastising" There is nothing I would have liked more than being at the site while all this was going on but I was just changing planes. That required almost 3 months of 6 days a week. No absence is accepted. Sooooo, I just had to go on photos and the "word" of the builder and Realtor. I absolutely agree that it needed and still does need traffic to pack it down. When 767 school was over and 3 weeks of "line training" completed it was December. SNOW...the last year had dropped over 5 FEET of snow in the Shenandoah valley and it didn't seem to be a good idea to take my Florida butt up there with that risk.
We'll just try to correct or at least improve what is there. Ditches, a heavily rocked dip or two, a culvert or two and seeding the slopes. Then lots of gravel and hundreds of car/tractor packing. Sure wish I had more time to go up there. I retire in 2.5 years, then I'm thinking a small house and well and septic and electricity....hmmm, am I crazy?:laughing:

 

[beppington]

Thanks guys and PAUL..:ashamed:..I had to laugh at the "chastising" There is nothing I would have liked more than being at the site while all this was going on but I was just changing planes. That required almost 3 months of 6 days a week. No absence is accepted. Sooooo, I just had to go on photos and the "word" of the builder and Realtor. I absolutely agree that it needed and still does need traffic to pack it down. When 767 school was over and 3 weeks of "line training" completed it was December. SNOW...the last year had dropped over 5 FEET of snow in the Shenandoah valley and it didn't seem to be a good idea to take my Florida butt up there with that risk.
We'll just try to correct or at least improve what is there. Ditches, a heavily rocked dip or two, a culvert or two and seeding the slopes. Then lots of gravel and hundreds of car/tractor packing. Sure wish I had more time to go up there. I retire in 2.5 years, then I'm thinking a small house and well and septic and electricity....hmmm, am I crazy?:laughing:

Always risky

 

[rambler]

Thanks guys and PAUL..:ashamed:..I had to laugh at the "chastising" There is nothing I would have liked more than being at the site while all this was going on but I was just changing planes.

I retire in 2.5 years, then I'm thinking a small house and well and septic and electricity....hmmm, am I crazy?:laughing:

You understand I come at this from experience of traveling down the path of life's experiences, not from wanting to chastise anyone. Emphisis on been there, done that worse than you ever had, sort of thing.

Here's where we are, and this is probably how we have to move forward....

Now, that last bit - we probably all are crazy for doing stuff like this. Doesn't mean we shouldn't try!

Have a good one.

--->Paul