Driveway Thru The Woods, Living With, Costs And Other Questions

[SnowRidge]

If there is county water in the area and you plan to use it check with them on costs also. It has gotten real high in my area. Ten thousand to run the power line sure does seem high. Are they going to have to put a transformer in?

MarkV

Yes, they can only go about three hundred feet on an existing transformer. They get a grand, just to put the tranformer in.

There is water from another utility, but strangely, no fire hydrants. I haven't checked into that yet. We are on well water currently, and may put a well in at the new place. Water service is not required, and there is no sewer.

 

[tallyho8]

I had electricity run to one of my barns in 2001. It was a 900' run that required 3 new poles and a transformer. There was no charge from the power company at all, so there must be different regulations in different areas.

 

[dmccarty]

I built our 500 foot drive way myself. The driveway followed a skidder trail and I had to dig up some stumps. Maybe 6 that where 30-36 wide. The little 48 backhoe for the tractor worked but it took hours for each stump. The problem with a driven in the woods at my place is that you can only clear the path so much. The more you dig the more roots and rocks you find.

The power runs up the middle of the driveway. No way would I want overhead power lines. Unfortunately the lines 1200 feet down the road are overhead before they go underground. I can see at least two trees that in the next big wind/ice/snom storm are very likely to take out the power...

I just just extended the drive another 120 feet back to the "barn." The dump truck was $75 per hour and I think the ABC gravel was $10.25 per ton. The truck was able to deliver something like 5 yards per load. When I put in the first 500 feet in 2001ish the truck was $50 per hour and the ABC was $7.50 per yard. I also put down geotextile fabric which is not quite $1 a linear foot on a 12.5 foot wide roll.

If you have a tractor with a FEL and box blade you can certainly do the work yourself. Run one truck per 45-60 minutes and you should be able to keep up easily. I kinda new what I was doing when I built the first 500 feet. I had to put in a culvert as well. It took a couple of 4 and 8 hours days to get the drive done due to my time constraints. The second 120 feet was a single 8 hour day. A quarry has opened up closer to the house since 2001 and the truck was able to make a round trip every 30-45 minutes. I could easily keep up with him now that I have 700+ hours on the tractor.

Use road base of the driveway. Road base/ABC is a mixture of fine/dust up to gravel 1.5 to 2 inchs in size. The fines and various sizes binds real tight. I see people put down gravel with no fines and it does not lock togather at all. The geotextile keeps the gravel from sinking into the soil. I have had to touch up the top of our drive way once in 5-6 years and that included all of the house construction trafic. The gravel is only 2-3 inches thick. The original plan was to put down an 4-6 inches after the house was built. But we spent the money on other things instead. One day I'll add a bit more gravel to make the drive just right... I don't think I can do this without the geotextile fabric.

Later,
Dan

 

[SnowRidge]

I had electricity run to one of my barns in 2001. It was a 900' run that required 3 new poles and a transformer. There was no charge from the power company at all, so there must be different regulations in different areas.

Too true. Every utility district in East Tennessee seems to have different rules. A couple of examples: One gives an initial credit of $6,000 and wants a 20 foot easement. Another gives only a $1,000 credit and wants a 30 easement. Our property is located in the latter.

And it's not like they actually use the easements to keep the lines clear of the trees. All the neighboring properties' power lines are right up there in the trees.

 

[BarryinMN]

Here ROW's get cleared every 10 years or so. The utility contracts with a HUGE CAT payloader that has a front end mulcher attachment. He drives, crabs, swims, along and makes miles per day. Then another contractor comes thru & sprays roundup.

Overhead wires last longer IF they survive wind, hail, ice & sleet buildup, lightning, shorting to trees, pole rotting & collisions.

Underground they said is susceptible to rodents running alongside & chewing on the 7200v cable. The installer ran up & down the road twice pounding the dirt down with his backhoe on the other end of the vibratory subsoiler cable installer machine.

They gave me a credit of the $$ difference of x decades of ROW & pole maintenance vs the underground install price. My cost was about $2.75/ft x 1000 ft. That included a new ground transformer & concrete pad it sits on.

 

[Slamfire]

I lucked out, I'm about a quarter mile from the paved road, but on an existing road from before payment. The Forest Service bought a 50 foot ROW in the late 50s, and had gravel base down to within 100 feet of the house. The D-8 that cleared the lot did my drive just getting to the building site, he didn't have enough work to cover his minimum charge as it was.
I did have one heck of a time getting the water out of the old road, and actually spent a couple of weeks, with a rear blade, getting the contour right. I used my pond scoop to make 3 holes for the runoff.
The power line ROW is 30 feet, but the electric coop said the dogwoods could stay as they never got tall enough to bother. I've been bush hogging locust sprouts a couple times a year.
After 30 years in the power utility business there was no way I was going underground! I helped the pole spotter, lay out the line, and we only had to guy one pole where the drive turned out of the road, and the transformer pole. There are 5 poles that I pay for over 15 years on the electric bill, starting from an existing service. The transformer sits about 50 feet from the house and I put in an old pole for the service drop and meter box.
I had to put 10 yards of what is locally called septic rock in for a base, and haven't needed to top it off with fines, as there's bedrock just a couple of inches down in the clay. Total cost of the drive a bit over $500 for the rock. From the ROW I got 6 cords of fire wood, and we didn't buy propane for two winters. An ice storm took out the line between the transformer and the meter box. A soft maple shed a couple of major limbs. It was 4 days till the linemen showed up. I anticipated that, and got an 8 kw generator to power the pump, refrigerator and freezer. We had enough left over to light two rooms and watch tv. My wife can cook on a wood stove as well as on electric.

 

[InlineDieselFan]

It is all area dependant but I am $25,000 into my gravel driveway that is 1400' long, two years ago. But I had special things that I had to do, crossed a 90' wide wetland, two culverts and 3-3 1/2' thick of rocks. The driveway is 12' wide and I needed to have all stumps trees cleared for a total 24' wide area the full length for the power trench. the driveway widens out to more than 30' as it comes over to the house, and 48' when it continues up to the shop.

also the base is supposed to be made so that someday when I win the lottery I can pave my driveway.

As mentioned power lines in the ground or on poles only last so long, so find out who is responsible. Where I live I am on the hook from the meter attached to the side of the house or shop. Some places from the transformer to the house, and I have heard of other places, where you are responsible from your property line on back. So the price of replacement can vary greatly.

If you run underground find out if you are able to put the phone line and or cable in the same trench? My phone line is in the same two foot wide trench as my electric.

steve

 

[JRobyn]

One thing to keep in mind about the width of a gravel road clearing in the woods: if the clearing allows sunlight to reach the road surface, it will dry MUCH faster year-round and you will have fewer water/mud issues as a result.

- Jay
(with about 1500' of gravel road/drive in Mid TN)

 

[riptides]

Go wide with your tree clearing, then go wider.

-Mike Z.