Drying a wet road

[hayden]

I've got a mud problem with the road going into my place that I think is similar to several other people. All the guidance I've received suggests its all about getting the water away first, then it's about a road surface, so that's what I've been doing. I've attached some pictures of the mud last spring, trenching along side the road to create a swale for the water, then a culvert pipe to take the water from the uphill side to the down hill side of the road. In the last photo which was a week later, things looked much better.

I still have lots of shaping and grading to do as well as some more trenching, but the acid test will be next spring. For all I know I've made no difference at all.

 

[TWINKLE_TOES]

Hayden,
That is going to be one beautiful drive when your done. /w3tcompact/icons/smile.gif It's pretty right now!
Al

 

[MChalkley]

Hayden - It looks like you've made a lot of progress. The hard part, as you're seeing first hand, is keeping the water from standing in the road. Basically, the rule of thumb is that mud only happens when the water doesn't flow off. One way to do this without actually ditching is to make the road a couple feet wider on each side than you plan to drive on. This sometimes isn't very effective on roads wide enough to let two cars pass easily, but on a single lane drive, I've found it to work pretty well. Another place it won't work is when you've got a lot of clay, so the water won't "perc" through it - in that case, you're stuck with having to put in serious ditches. Still, in most cases ditching can be as simple as repeatedly crowning the road in the center with the material from the edges - the less permeable the soil is, the deeper and/or wider the "ditches" need to be. Once you get the road shaped, you can plant grass in the shoulder/ditch, and be done with it, but you'll still have to re-crown the road occasionally. Most of the time though, this won't involve regrading the shoulder/ditch, except maybe to grab just a few inches of shoulder and pull it back into the road, since the crown will eventually run over into the shoulder and create a "dam" right at the edge of the shoulder, causing the water to stand in the road again, which leads to potholes and mud once again. If you can put some crusher run on the part you're going to drive on after it's crowned, so much the better. And, of course, at some point, if the road is itself on the side of a hill, you've got to put in a pipe at the lowest point to let the water from the high side down to the low side, but you've got that covered, it looks like.

MarkC

 

[Boondox]

Peter -- That's a FINE looking Vermont highway! /w3tcompact/icons/wink.gif

Pete

www.GatewayToVermont.com

 

[MarkV]

Hayden,

That sure is a pretty place. I have a similar on going project and would agree with everything MarkC had to say. In my case our red clay does not perk at all so I need good size ditches and need to keep them clean. Our slick old clay still will not work for a road without a gravel base, which has been an on going thing.

What struck me in the photos was if the road is wide enough. Nature is always going to try and bring that high side down hill and it looks like that will continue to fill the ditches. If this is your main drive it might be worth bringing in a dozer to cut back the high side, make the ditches and bring the roadbed up. Any gravel you add sure will hold better on a raised roadbed.

Good luck, looks like a fun project. Looks like a tough place to control snow fall.

MarkV

 

[GlueGuy]

Hayden,

You might want to try a "super" on that.

The traditional way to handle a road that has one high side and another low side (like you have), is to put a ditch on the high side. The ditch will have culverts every now and then.

Problem is that culverts have a nasty habit of clogging up. They can be cleaned easily, but only if you get a "round tuit".

Something that we've been doing out here with some success is building the road with a "super". Instead of putting in the ditch and crowning the road, you build the road with a continuous slope toward the low side. This eliminates the culverts, ditch, etc. The maintenance tends to be lower, as long as the road has plenty of rock and the surface is well compacted.

Here's a crude drawing to show the basic idea. Both views are looking at a cross section of the road (looking down the long way).

The GlueGuy

 

[hayden]

Agreed. The crowning is still something I need to do.

Whether you dig ditches or just have enough crown to shed water a foot or two away from the main road surface, the shedded water needs to have a place to go so it doesn't build up. Many times it will just flow away. My ditches and culverts are more about collecting the water on the uphill side of the road and getting to the downhill side via some route other than across the road surface.

Harv's post under Rural Living is what prompted me to post this since his road seems to have a similar configuration to mine where the road is the low point. We both have the same choices it seems: Build up the road, or ditch to draw away the water. Even if you build up the road, the water still needs to get drawn away somehow from what I can tell.

I've found myself paying much more attention to roadsides, ditches, crowns, and culverts these days as I drive back roads. It's interesting to see how it's done.

 

[hayden]

It is in fact Town Highway #15. You should see the backroads!

 

[hayden]

Encroachment on the road is a problem, particularly in the winter as you suggested. At the same time it's a very nice "town highway" and I hate to bring it too much up to snuff. I just want it to be passable year round, but otherwise remain as rural as possible.

 

[hayden]

I've got a few spots that are configured just like that. They seem to work well where the road is flat. If the road is steep, then the water sometimes decides to run down the road surface rather than across and off the surface. When it runs down the road it ruts and creates a stream and then it's history.

This past spring was my first attempt at solving the problems, and I really can't tell how effective the measures have been until next spring. So far the corrective actions have included a bunch of approaches and it will be interesting to see what works and what needs more help. I'm sure I'm not done. Not by any measure.