herefromthere
Bronze Member
- Joined
- Jul 16, 2011
- Messages
- 71
- Location
- Wet Side of WA
- Tractor
- Kubota L3200HST 4WD, BH77 w/Mechanical Thumb, Land Pride BB1572 Box Scraper
When they cut my timber,,
the loggers built a road, 1/8 mile long.
They stripped the topsoil, and left a SLIGHT side to side grade.
Next the soil was covered with railroad ballast.
Then, after running in the RR ballast with a D6 CAT, the road was top-dressed with 57's
The ran 160 loaded 18-wheelers over the road during the wettest spring we have seen in over 40 years.
The trucks all had overload permits, they were not allowed on the interstate due to excess weight,
so, they must have been significantly over 80,000 pounds.
The road is still perfect, 7 years later.
There's a lot to be said for RR ballast. (That's 3/4" and 2-1/2" screen, crushed in my area.) I put it over less than optimal base in two locations, and it worked even better than I thought it would. I always remove as much topsoil as possible first.
In another spot, I used it to build up an area before putting 1-1/4 minus surfacing over it for a steep hill on my driveway. It packed and keyed really firmly over a pretty short timeframe without using compaction equipment. The delivery dump trucks compacted previous layers, then my tractor did more when grading. Finally, I just drove my car and truck on it to finish it off.
At a nearby logging operation, they put a thin layer of RR ballast over some really old pit run base that they barely scraped some of the organic stuff off the top, and it held up to log trucks and equipment in the PNW wet season.
For the OP, the 2nd contractor sounds like they have the best plan/materials.
*Edit: Agree with the geo-textile proposed by the 2nd contractor, but I feel like I'd want larger material for the base. As a NON-professional, I'm only going by internet edumuhcation, but it's what worked in practice for me as well.
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