BUilding a new road, culvert suggestions?

[DJ54]

You may check around, and see if there is any natural gas pipeline in your area. Sometimes they replace sections amounting to thousands of feet. I bought approx. 100' of 20", several years back, for $2.00 per foot. It is 3/16" thick.. The bowed pieces where they pulled out, and held up to cut, come in handy for ravines with a slight curve... Great stuff..!! Also tubular piling left over from construction projects...

Large culverts can be made from old underground fuel storage tanks also. Cutting the ends out are iffy though...

Also around gravel pits, or power plants that use coal, or coal wash plants... Some use large diamenter polyethylene pipe, with 2" walls. What they consider worn, is plenty good for culverts.. We ran loaded single, and tandem trucks with 18 to 24" cover, and didn't distort them...

 

[studor]

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

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

WOW -- seems a might pricey -- have you tried the big box stores with a special order? Those prices look like a supplier of choice to government
Around here I frequently see used steel and concrete culverts for sale -- problem is they are always on an as is where is basis and moving them is more than the culvert is worth. That much water is a fulltime creek- all the more reason to make sure the first time is big enough and strong enough to last a long time -JMHO

 

[green duck]

Think I may have found a solution. 15'' PIP underground pipe, used by local farmers for culverts.

Sells for: $7.75/ft per 22 ft sticks

So $170/piece sounds better than $493 or $893

 

[EddieWalker]

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.

I just checked the price listed for culverts at McCoys on their website and it's just a bit less they your price. As a contractor, I get them for a bit less then the listed price, but not by a huge amount.

Polyethylene Culverts and Accessories | Culverts

A 24 inch pipe will handle a massive amont of water. Do you need this size pipe? Are you sure? I've almost maxed out 15 inch pipes, but never an 18 inch. The county requires 24 inch pipes along the highway, but that's some very serious drainage and it never gets half way in the worse storms.

If you need that big, I feel for you. It's going to be allot of money, and with that amount of water to deal with, nothing you make of find will substitute for what a culvert can do. On top of having to buy the culvert, you will also need to protect both ends of the pipe. That much volume through the pipe will eat away the soil going in, and especially coming out. The area around the exit of the pipe will have extreme turbulance and require rip rap, large stone or concrete to protect the pipe and soil from erosion.

Even smaller 15 and 18 inch pipes will have serious erossion issues at the end of the pipe on heavy rains. I like chunks of broken up concrete to stop this, but will also use 40 pound sacks of concrete stacked on top of each other with rebar through them.

Eddie

 

[green duck]

Do you need this size pipe? Are you sure?

Eddie

I'm not sure. This is a new road crossing a pasture. There is a creek that ends and dumps all of its water into this pasture. It crosses the pasture in the lowest spot. The water, with a good rain, is probably 6-7 feet across and about 1 foot deep.

Keep in mind that this is with a down-pour, which happens seldom, but it does happen. What I'm going to do is cut a ditch along the side of the road to direct the water to one location, and that's where the culvert will be.

This spot is the worst and the other places will probably be fine with a smaller culvert.

Also ,keep in mind that the road is long and downhill to the low spot, with the ditch all along the side that is going to add more water to the low spot.

Based on what I have told you, would a 15'' pipe work, cause $175 is more what I was thinking?

Thanks

 

[EddieWalker]

It's ipossible to estimate what size pipe will work for you without seeing our place and knowing your conditions. I live in an area that gets heavy rains, with 2 inches in an hour not being uncommon, and 5 inch rains in a few hours happening about every other year. That much water on the ground creats allot of runoff. I have a field that's about 8 acres of grass, and another ten acres fo woods that works it's way to the grass. That all goes through a 15 inch culvert, but on extreme rains, I've seen where it's maxed out for brief periods of time. The water has never gone over the road, but it's filled up that pipe to the point it was pooling up.

My 18 inch culvert, and I only have the one, is down hill from that 15 inch pipe. Even though it's only 3 inches larger, it handles twice the volume, or more, then the smaller pipe. It gets more water from other areas then the pipe above it, plus the water from that pipe, and it's never come close to maxing out.

Hope this helps,
Eddie

 

[Egon]

If you get a topo map you could figure out the drainage area which, with rainfall could be used to determine culvert flow.

 

[charlz]

Are those prices for smooth lined plastic culverts? I would imagine they cost more than the ones with ribbed interiors. Smooth is also supposed to handle more water for a given diameter. Slope is another key factor in the carrying capacity of a culvert.

 

[green duck]

Are those prices for smooth lined plastic culverts? I would imagine they cost more than the ones with ribbed interiors. Smooth is also supposed to handle more water for a given diameter. Slope is another key factor in the carrying capacity of a culvert.

The expensive ones, $400-$800, are ribbed inside I believe. These are the black plastic ones that more and more people are using these days, that are ribbed on the outside. I assume they are ribbed on the inside.

The $175 15'' x 22' is a smooth pipe, basically a big pvc pipe.

 

[studor]

They should be smooth on the inside -- the ribbing on the outside is to help bed them and prevent water from flowing beside them. As Eddie points out, a little concrete on the upstream side is a good idea just to grout them in place.
Whether the pipe will handle the waterflow remains to be seen and is probably best done with a little experimentation over a period of time. I have a 60" culvert to handle a river(big creek) that flows through the middle of my place. In the spring, that culvert is often underwater while the rest of the year it only has about a foot of water in it! One way I have avoided the road being washed away it to have put a number of "french drains" (crushed rock) across the road to act as overflow areas -- seems to have worked for the last couple of years