Dealing with deep mud

[Boondox]

Portions of my driveway, including a section directly in front of one of my garage bays, have a lot of clay in the soil so this time of year, as the snow retreats and the ground dries out, those areas turn to absolute boot-sucking muck!

If I bring in a couple loads of sand and spread it over the bad areas, will it work its way into the clay and give me better drainage...or should I remove the clay and replace it altogether with something that drains better?

Pete

 

[Egon]

Pete:

New tractor, new backhoe ! /forums/images/graemlins/grin.gif

Dig it out with clear drainage slope and backfill with granular material.

Top it off with cement paving blocks?

Egon /forums/images/graemlins/grin.gif

 

[avorancher]

I had a similar situation on a dirt road and tried to put sand/gravel on top thinking that clay and sand would be something like concrete. It is... but concrete is as bad as clay when wet. The solution did nothing to eliminate the water which is the problem.

I ended up taking out some the clay, putting in a couple small drain pipes, and refilling with a layer of gravel, a layer of landscape fabric to keep the dirt from binding back with the gravel, then put the dirt back in. I didn't spend much time or money on the fix, thinking that I'd probably want to do it better anyway if it was even partically successful.

Now I notice that water seeps out of the drain pipe ends instead of up into into the road. It has been good for the past year.

 

[Boondox]

Egon, New tractor, no backhoe. And I'm not sure where my 1" water line is buried. All I know is it is only a few inches underground in the vicinity of the house (found it with the backhoe a couple years ago 6" down) so I hesitate to do the perforated drain pipe thing...

 

[Egon]

Sounds like a little crushed gravel over the top may be in order for short term.

Have you considered "finding" the water line and locating it deeper or in another location so you can dig down a bit to get proper depth for drainage and load bearing weight?

Egon /forums/images/graemlins/grin.gif

 

[rswyan]

Like this ? (attached)

The area in the picture is the tie-in from the new driveway to the old driveway near the house. It's near the bottom of a 250' slope - so all that water is draining down towards this section of drive. I had to remove 12"+ of topsoil to get down to the exisiting clay.

I then backfilled it with clay from the polebarn pad (part of the way there in the picture) I drained the puddle you see in the picture and added some more clay and compacted it.

We then laid geotextile and put down 10" or so bankrun gravel and coated it with a couple of inches of crusher run. This section of driveway is now marginally just above the surrounding grade ...... and it is almost like concrete. Initially it was very spongy - until the water had a chance to drain. Our trash hauler now drives over it every week with no problems with a fairly large compactor truck (dual rear wheels)

The point is, clay is a fine material for building a road on - you just have to get road/driveway above the surrounding grade and provide adequate drainage.

 

[ByronBob]

Pete I'd go with stone. 2 inch crusher run will pack really good.

 

[HammerFour]

First put down some geotextile fabric, then some mid sized stones ( 3 inch or so ) then some small stuff ( 1 inch and less ) and you will be done.

The fabric will keep your newly purchased gravel from sinking into the clay.

Not sure what you have available to use for gravel there, we have limestone quarries here. I know a lot of areas closer to the coast have ground shells, etc that you could use.

 

[TC18guy]

If you add stone it may give the driveway area some support but the water still needs to go somewhere, you may be creating a problem somewhere else. Is the problem ground water or surface water or both? If it's just surface water, you may want to consider using leaching basins.

 

[DAP]

Pete, I will tell you this from experience ... if you put ANY kinda of material on top of those clay pits and subject it to regular traffic, it will get splashed out or otherwise removed.

The ONLY way I know of for sure is to remove the clay and replace it with something else. I used to have a 1800 foot drive way with one of those clay pits every 15ft .... I tried many many things, but removing the clay was the only thing that worked.

Have at it.... /forums/images/graemlins/blush.gif