BUilding a new road, culvert suggestions?

[LBrown59]

i know folks will disagree with this but if they are burried deep enuff and nothing to terriblly heavy is driven on them, barrels will make a fine culvert. cut the ends out and and place them end to end in ditch. we have many that have been in the ground for 30 years or more. my grand dad was a tight wad, and he could get all the free barrels he needed from the state road garage, you see back in the old days they would paint the lines on the roads themselves, that paint came in 55 gallion drums. so if you can get your hands on some barrels then you got some good cheap culverts, ya can spot weild em together too.

Would plastic drums work also?

 

[dawoodwa]

We use the black corrugated plastic culverts. Work good and are cheaper here than the galvanized. Forest Service allows loggers to use them on gov't land. Another method we have used that was mentioned in a previous post is making a ford. We have used geo-grid and filled it with surge stone, I have run a tandem dump truck loaded across these with no problems.

 

[MikeD74T]

Bury the barrels deep then a layer of 10' logs parallel with the road. Cover with a clay gravel mix. 8" oak over a 2' span will hold up log trucks & skidders (rolling loads, not a twitch road). Buried logs last a very long time if air is excluded. MikeD74t

 

[studor]

The metal barrel idea will work but by the time you weld five together and pay say $15 for them (and that is cheap) it will seem like a lot of effort for something that will rust and deteriorate.-- JMHO

 

[EddieWalker]

...My question is can someone recommend an alternative to buying 3 culverts for $400 a piece. They need to be big to handle the large amount of water crossing the road...

Where in the world do you live?

A 12 inch by 20 foot long, ribbed outside, smooth inside, black, plastic culvert will run $130 at Lowes. The 15 inch culverts are $170 and the 18 inch culverts are $200 each.

Most places on my land, a 12 inch culvert if plenty. I would never go any smaller then 12 inches. It's just too easy to plug up, not to mention that those smaller pipes just don't handle very much water. One 12 inch culvert will handle as much water as 6, six inch pipes. The difference is significant. Also, the smaller pipes will plug up on you real quickly. Even worse, multiple pipes installed together always leak between each other. There is no way to get compaction, plus the smooth pipe will always channel water. Smooth pipe will quickly erode along the sides and fairly quicly wash out.

Welding barrels together has allot of flaws. Rust will destroy them in just a few years. They are fairly thin and it will be very, VERY dificult to get compaction all the way around them. After spending the money buying them, taking the time to cut and weld them together, it will probably wash away on you after the first major storm.

When installing a culvert, the rule of thumb is to have half as much dirt over the culvert as the culvert is wide. A 12 inch culvert needs 6 inches of dirt. An 18 inch needs 9 inches of dirt over it. A barrel will need ALLOT of dirt over it.

Shop around, culverts are not that expensive. A plastic culvert will outlive all of us and then some. Do it right the first time and it will be the cheapest way by a huge margin.

Good Luck,
Eddie

 

[charlz]

You don't say now long the road is but at 18' feet wide I would think $1500 on culverts would be the cheap part

You say you have 3-4 years so I would look at doing the shallow fords for now and keep an eye on Craigslist. I see various diameter culverts, new and used, show up on there now and then in my area.

 

[powerstroke444e]

Try your local precast plant, they have lots of pipe that don't meet state spec's but they work fine for use on private property and are very cheap. I got this one for $200, but they are very heavy this one was like 4,600 lbs. And you should compact the soil under the pipe(remove sand and replace with clay if you can) and around the pipe as you are back filling when you do this it will be a real pain but will keep you from having to do it twice.

 

[studor]

If you are in remote bush without really heavy equipment, spend the money on plastic culverts and be done with it. Concrete,metal and "frugal fixes" will result in a "do-over" in short order (like first spring thaw). Don't ask me how I know this to be true

 

[MikeInEburg]

The "couple of pipes side by side" will work fine so long as you leave enough space between for proper fill. In that situation it is more like several independent pipes. I've done this in several locations successfully. I'd use plastic flex culvert - maybe 8 or 10 inch diameter. Correct size really depends on average water amounts.
Mike

 

[green duck]

Where in the world do you live?

Arkansas

Here are the prices I was quoted on Black Corrugated Pipe:

Both are for 20 ft.

36'' = $44.65/ft = $893/piece

24'' = $24.65/ft = $493/piece

The spiral galvanized culverts you see everywhere were not much cheaper. The area I have to put the culverts has a lot of water, so I would think it needs to be pretty big.