How to fix mud?

[marhar]

1. If at all possible keep water from running on the pad from the surrounding areas. That may not be the problem but it can exacerbate the problem. 2. Take a look at Geocell. You may be able to install this and then fill it with aggregate and top with sand. This method would give the water a path to leach into the ground. https://geomaxgeocell.com/geocell/ This stuff has actually been used for parking lots. https://www.prestogeo.com/gallery_p...-pavements/geopave-aggregate-porous-pavement/

 

[Creamer]

Sand. I would add some sand to your mix.

https://homereference.net/how-to-fix-a-muddy-yard/

Sand will let the water into the soil more and will make it softer when it rains but it will also let the moisture out quicker if it is not trapped in the soil via hardpan or surrounding clay. Remember clay is what you line a pond with if you want it to hold water. Depending on your usage and if you can stay off of it when it is wet, I would add sand and some drainage tile with grass that helps permeation or I would pack it very hard without grass and be adding rock, gypsum, and some of the other things and make sure it surface drains.

 

[sandman2234]

Here the city gives away what they call free mulch, which is just small tree limbs chopped up. People spread it in their dirt driveways and one to two years later the mulch rots, mixes with the already semi wet soil and the vehicles traveling on it turn it into a mudhole. My neighbor did it too. We dumped dirt in on top of it but to no avail, as the next time it rained, mud again. I finally took dug the dirt out, down to the bottom of the area effected by the rot and vehicles driving in it. (about a foot). I basically dug a trench the size of the road, piling the dirt up. Then I dug out the road, and filled the trench with that dirt, then went back with the trench dirt and filled the driveway. It has held up for the past 3 years and hopefully will for a while to come. On some of the drier neighbors driveways, the mulch doesn't have as bad of an effect.
Good luck! David from jax

 

[Rustyiron]

I have a landing at the property that I mostly use for wood cutting and storage. It is about 1/4 acre. When I bought the property it was unusable because it was too sloped, full of ruts, chunks of concrete fill etc. A couple of years ago I got hooked up with some nice clay fill and filled it in and now it is a very nice useable space. The clay is pretty tight and does not perc very well. After I got done filling I laid a bunch of free oak wood chips on it to make it so it wasn't a quagmire and add organics into the clay. That worked for a while until the chips broke down. Last winter it was pretty sloppy, but manageable. I just spent the day there reorganizing my wood operation and laying more chips. After running the tractor over it all day it again got pretty sloppy and rutted out. I want to fix this!

My initial goal was to plant grass on this landing after the first layer of chips broke down. Will planting grass on this area be enough to dry it up and keep it from getting so sloppy after a rain? Will the roots add more structure to the soil and keep it from turning into a rutted out sloppy mess when its wet or do I need to do more?
Sand? Lime? Aggregate?
Help!!

Never heard anyone say "nice clay fill" except for someone lining a pond they were building.
Got any shale in your area, like from somebody digging a basement? The least expensive is to just make this area shed water as it won't pass through it well, and stay off of it until it's dried enough to not rut up.

 

[LD1]

Without seeing the lay and slope of the land it's hard to say. But around here we solve wet areas with perforated drainage tile

 

[dirttoys]

Instead of raising the dam try lowering the river with a few Willow trees, they love to suck water out of wet areas.

This is the greatest idea ever!! OP didn't say he was in a hurry

 

[rScotty]

I think you are on the right track, and if you solve that you just probably will become very, filthy wealthy.

I got curious about clay & took a course in soil engineering in school - also so I could get away from all the boring math profs and learn something that was at least somewhat more akin to my old tractor. Here's the highlights:

Clay is simply fascinating stuff. It is the final disintigration product as some rocks decompose.
Granite decomposes to quartz gravel and clay - but the clay washes out of the granite mountains and down to the plains.....all the way across eastern Colorado & Kansas to the river and then the sea. Sometimes you will find a pocket of clay down in a granite split, though.... I've found green clay that way. It looked as pure as modeling clay. Old timers looked for gold dust in natural sediment filters like that.

Did you know that there are many kinds of clay but that chemically they all fit a common pattern? So it helps to know which clay you have so that you know what chemistry you are starting with. Common ones are illite, bentonite, keolinite, and montmorillanite. They are built around different light metals - like lithium & aluminum, sometimes iron & others.

The clay molecule is shaped like a plate - sortof - anyway it stacks like plates and is slightly charged - which is why water sticks to it so well. And that stacking is is what makes those tiny slippery platelets slide over one another so well. They are using water as a lube.

I've always wondered if there would be a process - possibly chemical - so that you could use the innate chemistry of clay to drive the water out or exchange water for something else. Go for it. Let us know......
take a look at:

https://web.viu.ca/earle/geol312/USC-anderson-clays.pdf

or also

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clay_chemistry

enjoy!
rScotty

 

[3 Horse Ranch]

Never heard anyone say "nice clay fill" except for someone lining a pond they were building.

I was surprised a few years ago working on an airport refurbish job. The airport had been built by the Army Corps of Engineers in the early 40s and used as a Pacific coast patrol base as well as a stop off for aircraft being flown to Russia through Alaska and Siberia. It was designed to handle heavy aircraft of the time, and continued to be used through the rest of the century for reginal jet aircraft up to 737-400s.

When we removed the paving for the taxiways the Army Corps of Engineers had bedded them on a layer of clay. The asphalt had alligatored over the years so rain got through the pavement, but it was mostly sound underneath and I never heard a report of a plane dropping through and the asphalt grinder only got stuck a few times in the mile an a half of taxiways.

All of that was removed and replaced with several feet of 2-8" quarry spalls topped with 1-1/4minus crushed gravel and then paved to handle specifically the 757 class of aircraft.

 

[Wyobuckaroo]

Considering our ground..... If I had that kind of issue in that size area.... Like said.. I would put in a base of 3-4" maximum pit run.. Spread and pack as well as I could then overlay with about 3" of compaction gravel.. I would NOT put down 1" of gravel then try to use it.. I would take the time as money allows to cover with the full 3" and only use the sections that I could cover at that thickness..

My 5 cents of opinion..

 

[rScotty]

I was surprised a few years ago working on an airport refurbish job. The airport had been built by the Army Corps of Engineers in the early 40s and used as a Pacific coast patrol base as well as a stop off for aircraft being flown to Russia through Alaska and Siberia. It was designed to handle heavy aircraft of the time, and continued to be used through the rest of the century for reginal jet aircraft up to 737-400s.

When we removed the paving for the taxiways the Army Corps of Engineers had bedded them on a layer of clay. The asphalt had alligatored over the years so rain got through the pavement, but it was mostly sound underneath and I never heard a report of a plane dropping through and the asphalt grinder only got stuck a few times in the mile an a half of taxiways.

All of that was removed and replaced with several feet of 2-8" quarry spalls topped with 1-1/4minus crushed gravel and then paved to handle specifically the 757 class of aircraft.

Yes, we are all still using variations on John McAdams original compacted gravel design for road beds. Later it was adapted to asphalt, but it's still his work that sets the standard. I am constantly amazed by his road design and glad it still bears his name... 200 years later.

Before McAdams, roads were basically either two ruts or sporatic stone pavers laid on the ground by the Romans - & removed by the Brits to make castles .... which got them back to the two rut roads.
Imagine a chariot on a corduroy log road across a marsh. And that was a GOOD road.

McAdams built roads up, not down. And not only used crushed gravel and fines as an interlocking base to make a road that would last, he made the center higher so the road would drain to the sides. What a guy. His roads still exist.
rScotty