Land plane for driveway

[dirt clod]

Thinking about making a land plane. My idea is different than any design I've seen. What is y'all's thoughts on this?

10 foot wide
Angle blades upward in center. Center 2inches higher

My idea is this would be excellent driveway tool.
The width would allow full coverage of driveway
The blades angled upward in middle by 2 inches would crown road for drainage.

Thinking this would allow driveway work to be completed by just dragging the land plane over it

 

[TractorGuy]

Might work. Let us know how it goes.

I prefer a grader blade for road and driveway shaping.

 

[oosik]

I use my rear blade to crown and clear driveway ditches. The LPGS with scarifiers down to smooth out potholes, riffles, etc.

 

[ROUSTABOUT]

You can do the job with a box grader. What you describe can only be used for one thing and one thing only. If that was a good idea road graders would be made that way. We built a box grader with adjustment. I was impressed, and I'm hard to impress.

 

[CoyPatton]

You can do the job with a box grader. What you describe can only be used for one thing and one thing only. If that was a good idea road graders would be made that way. We built a box grader with adjustment. I was impressed, and I'm hard to impress.

I agree. This will be a 1 trick pony.
I do not know what your property looks like, but often LPGS are used for more than just grading a driveway. Some examples
•smoothing out an arena
•smoothing out baseball infields
•leveling out gravel parking areas
And the list continues, these are simply for you to think about beside your drive way needs.
If you think it through, and you are ok with the 1 trick pony LPGS, go for it.

 

[ROUSTABOUT]

I agree. This will be a 1 trick pony.
I do not know what your property looks like, but often LPGS are used for more than just grading a driveway. Some examples
•smoothing out an arena
•smoothing out baseball infields
•leveling out gravel parking areas
And the list continues, these are simply for you to think about beside your drive way needs.
If you think it through, and you are ok with the 1 trick pony LPGS, go for it.

With a hydraulic top link we can move some serious dirt with a tractor. It will carry 2 1/2 yards. Just fill grader up, raise top link just a little so it quits digging, and you are moving dirt. Raise the lift in the same area each time and you build a large berm. Then call the dump trucks. Last time I moved 200 yards in one morning. We had two dump trucks and two skid steers. They had a 2 mile round trip. While they was gone we piled the loose dirt up so it would be faster loading the trucks. It was all off road. So they were driving slow and overloaded.

 

[BackRoad]

It may work, but it seems limiting, like having a very specific, inflexible, single-use tool.

If you try it, might consider raising the center 3 or even 4 inches over the 10 feet.

My experience years ago living in Louisiana was getting high volume, frog choking rains very quickly...suspect you get the same in FL.

2 inches may be on the low end for a center crown with an objective to shed water quickly and not soak the driveway base.

My 7' EA LP can load up my 60hp MX, HST drive tractor. It pulls the LP while going up a measured 7% grade, although it feels the load.

You may be flat, but a 10' LP might limit using your 33 HP Kubota, though it looks like you have a few tractors to pick from.

Like most, I use the 3PH side lift adjustment while working the LP. It's adjustable and makes the crown and grading work tunable and flexible, although my use likely differs from the majority, as I maintain a 1/2 mile private road, 2 cars wide.

 

[Thomas]

Do you have ditches to clean out?

 

[dirt clod]

Sorry I didnt mention the rise on center would be adjustable. Think about a disc harrow how the gangs can be adjusted for different angles. Now think about how the disc gang adjustment would work if you stood the discs up vertical. Now instead of disc gangs it would be flat blades. Also worth mentioning is I have a old set of discs thats not worth repairing along with some other old junk implements. Top links, side links or hydraulic cylinder with lock could move blades.

 

[airbiscuit]

Here's what I made. The rear gauge wheel maintains the crown.