Dirt Moving Building a road

[TSO]

Buy or rent a tiller. In my experience this is the best way to break up the soil into manageable material which is much easier to move around, and it will save you a lot of time. I agree with the other posters, no reason to go so deep, the geotextile fabric will act as your larger rock base, you can put the smaller stone on top of that and compact.

 

[RPW]

You might want to rent a 4 ton double roller. We found that it is extremely effective to get a good road surface. Much more effective than using your tractor. It didn't cost us very much for 2 days use.

 

[vtsnowedin]

We are only talking 400 feet here. Lets keep the cost reasonable. The tractor going back and forth will compact it soon enough especially if he does it right after a rain.

 

[edgarrian]

you only need to remove topdirt, donot remove clay, use number 4 limestone and then top. use fabric if you want. after you throw down the bigger limestone have the truck compact the stone, then do your fines

 

[joeu235]

I paid one of the best dirt men around to build my 2000 ft road two years ago. Soil is black land clay that goes down to China. He used a road grader to make a berm out of the existing soil with a ditch on either side. He told me to let the dirt berm sit for at least half a year and let the rain and traffic compact the soil before I topped it with gravel. I hauled a 17K pound trailer on the road last week just after 4 inches of rain and the road did just fine.

I have an additional 500 ft of road I need to make at the same land. Since I don't have a road grader, I'm going to use a moldboard plow to make the ditches and elevated road and then smooth out with a skid steer and final grading with a Road Boss grader.

 

[mx1alex]

I don;t mean to hijack but this question somewhat pertains to the topic at hand. I just built a house and had to quickly get gravel brought in so the construction crew could get to the site. So now I have some 3" rock basically just sitting on the ground... pretty thin in spots. The drive is on a natural crown or ridge so I'm not too worried about water issues.

Should I just keep adding more gravel on top or start anew and dig out what I've put down already to get a better base started? The drive is about 200' is all so it wouldn't be to hard to remove what's there.

 

[vtsnowedin]

I don;t mean to hijack but this question somewhat pertains to the topic at hand. I just built a house and had to quickly get gravel brought in so the construction crew could get to the site. So now I have some 3" rock basically just sitting on the ground... pretty thin in spots. The drive is on a natural crown or ridge so I'm not too worried about water issues.

Should I just keep adding more gravel on top or start anew and dig out what I've put down already to get a better base started? The drive is about 200' is all so it wouldn't be to hard to remove what's there.

3 inch rock is the good stuff for base but it needs to be in at least a six inch layer and capped with some 3/4" crushed gravel or stone mix to allow fine grading and compaction.
Edit to add: Show us some pictures please!!!

 

[Daronspicher]

A ton of great feedback here, thank you everyone.

The land is essentially flat as a pancake. I think there may be a 2 foot variance across 10 acres. I have a pretty good idea where the water goes when we have too much, it's almost like a 200 foot wide 1 inch deep flow headed in 2 directions. aka, not much real run away from this road I'm going to build.

What I seem to be learning here is I probably should take off the black dirt layer, but keep it around.

Put on a good 8 inches of 3" limestone, probably over fabric just for fun. Fabric may just be a waste of $400. I'll ask an actual local road builder (same guy who thought I should take the clay down and build a swimming pool for the 3" limestone). I'll see what he thinks of fabric just for fun.

Then, go over with maybe more.. 5 or 6 inches of 3/4" limestone.

When I have that in place, use the set aside black dirt to slope up to the gravel on both sides.

Sounding better?

Thanks, -Daron

 

[vtsnowedin]

Ayup you have gathered the best advise we have to offer.
Have fun building your project/drive. Things like this are what we all bought our tractors for.

 

[jenkinsph]

A ton of great feedback here, thank you everyone.

The land is essentially flat as a pancake. I think there may be a 2 foot variance across 10 acres. I have a pretty good idea where the water goes when we have too much, it's almost like a 200 foot wide 1 inch deep flow headed in 2 directions. aka, not much real run away from this road I'm going to build.

What I seem to be learning here is I probably should take off the black dirt layer, but keep it around.

Put on a good 8 inches of 3" limestone, probably over fabric just for fun. Fabric may just be a waste of $400. I'll ask an actual local road builder (same guy who thought I should take the clay down and build a swimming pool for the 3" limestone). I'll see what he thinks of fabric just for fun.

Then, go over with maybe more.. 5 or 6 inches of 3/4" limestone.

When I have that in place, use the set aside black dirt to slope up to the gravel on both sides.

Sounding better?

Thanks, -Daron

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.