6" of Rain - Gravel Driveway Catastrophe

[jjp8182]

Thanks gents.

Got another heavy downpour last night, maybe 1 to 1.5". Looks like it washed my repaired edges a bit, but no real damage. The upshot is that it nicely cleaned all my sandy brown gravel in the rebuilt driveway into a nice natural grey again.

I-94 is still closed in Detroit. I guess building sunken highways that depend on having multiple functional electric pumps is a risky move in a city prone to vandalism and neglect.

View attachment 704094

That reminds me of an issue on I-35W in Minneapolis where someone put a manhole to the storm drain system at a low point in the road....so whenever they got a sufficiently heavy rain all the rushing water would come surging out of the manhole launching the cover into the air. Don't recall if anyone ever got injured (though I do recall vehicle being damaged).

Not sure if/when it ever got fixed, since I moved to Alabama (for work) shortly after seeing one instance on the news of it happening. Moving to Alabama (and living here for ~14 years) has given me a whole new appreciation for drainage & water management. The average yearly rainfall in this region is ~55 inches, though in the last 14 years there's been a few years where the total annual rainfall was close to 6 feet. Most of that rain tends to come in the winter/spring months where we may get 2"-3" of rain multiple days in a row, and the ground tends to stay pretty well saturated for weeks at a time.

Found the video of the I-35W drain:

 

[mx1alex]

Owned this place for 8 years now and the driveway never needed anything but minor touch up work... That is until the last couple of weeks. Got a 6" of rain a couple weekends ago that gutted the driveway pretty bad. I drug everything up the hill with the box blade and it did a pretty good job of smoothing things out. Then 5 days later we got another fast and heavy 6" rain that completely washed it out again only this time carried the gravel down to the drainage ditch along the road. Internet provider came in and installed fiber internet last summer and in doing their trenching changed up how my drive drains just enough that it keeps a lot of the water from running down the ditch like it normally did.

 

[deezler]

Dang jjp, that video is crazy. Talk about a water hammer. The one poor sap who hits the dislodged cover than gets blasted again by a second round of eruption... cruel.

Alex, looks like you need some crown in your drive to force the water off to the sides, so it doesn't run right down the lane.

 

[MossRoad]

That reminds me of an issue on I-35W in Minneapolis where someone put a manhole to the storm drain system at a low point in the road....so whenever they got a sufficiently heavy rain all the rushing water would come surging out of the manhole launching the cover into the air. Don't recall if anyone ever got injured (though I do recall vehicle being damaged).

Not sure if/when it ever got fixed, since I moved to Alabama (for work) shortly after seeing one instance on the news of it happening. Moving to Alabama (and living here for ~14 years) has given me a whole new appreciation for drainage & water management. The average yearly rainfall in this region is ~55 inches, though in the last 14 years there's been a few years where the total annual rainfall was close to 6 feet. Most of that rain tends to come in the winter/spring months where we may get 2"-3" of rain multiple days in a row, and the ground tends to stay pretty well saturated for weeks at a time.

Found the video of the I-35W drain:

Dang!

 

[mx1alex]

Dang jjp, that video is crazy. Talk about a water hammer. The one poor sap who hits the dislodged cover than gets blasted again by a second round of eruption... cruel.

Alex, looks like you need some crown in your drive to force the water off to the sides, so it doesn't run right down the lane.

Yeah it never did have much crown but before the utility folks messed up the drainage the drive way only really had to drain off what fell directly on it. Now it's catching runoff form both sides of it that used to never get on the driveway.

 

[plowhog]

Now it's catching runoff form both sides of it that used to never get on the driveway.

Water on a driveway is bad. Water under a driveway is worse.

 

[Milo]

The condition of yours before the fix is better than most of the folks on my road !

I can only dream my road was as nice as his drive before the fix!

Nice job grooming it back.

 

[Stradbash]

Yes, it was a pretty good storm and I was equally surprised by the amount of gravel that was moved around by it. I have a similar situation where I live. What I first noticed was the gravel on your lane and as someone else pointed out the lack of crown. My lane was limestone when I moved in and every few years we would get some more (21A) to do some repairs etc. 5 years or so ago we started using recycled asphalt. That has worked well for us and there is much less ice build up in winter due to the solar heating of the lane surface. Even though we have hills on our lane, there wasn't enough damage for me to feel compelled to go out and re-grade this week. I'm near Ann Arbor and glad I live well above the river and on a hill.

 

[CoyPatton]

If it is a roadway ditch that he filled, contact the government authority (city, county or state street/highway department) that governs the roadway. They ate typically mandated for the ditches to handle a certain level of water flow. And I can assure you that few will be concerned with the level or slope for mowing.

 

[PILOON]

Years ago we had one of those massive rains.

I used the rushing water to my advantage as with a shovel I helped dislodge any rocks and the flow washed the fines and irrigated a nice ditch 4 me.
That storm was so bad that massive chunks of asphalt were stripped from many hills.
One location had a washout large enough to hide a semi from view.

Being very hilly in this area water picked up momentum with disasterous results in many cases.