Filling large hole in a road

[JimMorrissey]

Yeah, I'll dig it out. I've got some fill material for a good portion of it. Not worth a sag in the road and a massive puddle two years down the road.

I didn't have clay on my last two properties and don't have a whole lot of experience with it....aside from art class in 4th grade.

 

[have_blue]

</font><font color="blue" class="small">( Bob, How deep have you jelly holes been in the past. )</font>

Mostly 2-4 feet. I had 1 so bad I couldn't hardly cross it with my tractor. It's like I was driving across a huge Tempra mattress. It stayed there for weeks, then we had a hard rain. I was thinking "Oh boy, I'll really sink now!" Imagine my surprise 3 or 4 days aftrer the rain it was solid as could be!

I know it sounds counter-intuitive, but dry dirt is the culprit, not wet dirt. Even topsoil on top of wet clay settles and compacts when it gets a good soaking and becomes heavy enough to squeeze the water out.

 

[Corm]

Hello Jim. I also live in Vt, and live in an area with that nasty clay soil. Based on my experience in maintaining a 1/4 mile drive for nearly 20 years now, and doing lot's of digging around my home, I would do as HaveBlue suggests, and leave it for a while. Once it dries, it'll be just like cement. One other thing I've learned - if you dig a big hole like what you did, unless you provide adequate drainage, be sure and backfill it with native soil. Filling the hole with gravel, sand, or topsoil, will only create a hole that never dries out. The surrounding clay will act like a big bowl. This has been my hard earned experience, take it for what it's worth.

Good luck with whatever you decide to do!

Corm

 

[dmccarty]

Jim,

Is your driveway going to be gravel with not concrete or asphalt?

If its just gravel I don't think you will have a problem. I dug some massive holes when I removed the stumps in the way of my driveway. Some of the $%^&*( where twin trees 30+ inches in diameter. EACH. What A Mess. I had one stump with a tap root that was over 6 feet long. It took two work days, about eight hours total to get that thing out....

I can remember three big holes I dug that where at least 10-12 feet across. I think one only had to be a couple feet deep. The other two where 5 to 6 feet deep. I filled in the holes with whatever soil I had, clay. It set for maybe a year or so until I built the driveway.

The soil was bouncy for a while but eventually compacted.

I put down geotextile fabric and put on 3-4 inches of ABC. Not had a problem since. IF you just put in gravel and the hole does shrink add more gravel.

Later,
Dan

 

[JimMorrissey]

Thanks guys....appreciate the input.

What I've done is remove all the soil I put in which was making it jelly-like.......Then I filled the hole with some broken slabs of concrete and a bunch of large and small rocks mixed with the native soils. It is extremely firm now. My only concern is that the rocks might return to the surface during the freeze/thaw cycle each spring. Hopefully this won't happen as the main rock base is below the frost line and rocks transfer heat. I believe it was the right thing to do in the long run. We'll see /forums/images/graemlins/tongue.gif The reason I didn't leave it with the original soil is that I don't have six months or a year to wait for natural compaction to take place.

BTW, I forgot to mention that the road will be 1 1/2" crushed gravel over geotextile with about 6" of "surepak" crushed stone on top. I'm thinking 8" of the big crushed gravel base will do the trick, however the engineers plans call for 12". I will probably end up with 12" in the end.

 

[earthface]

I know the exact problem. I had those jelly holes on simular soil on a place i had that had a poorly constructed road. I learned how to fix and here is what I did to those spots and was after wards able to run a forklift on them year round after wards.
First you will have to remove 2 to 3 ft of soil dirt. Then put in layer of broken rock up to 6 in, cover with dirt pack, Put in next layer 6 t0 8 in of railroad balast cover with dirt compact well. Then about 6 to 8 in of 1 1/2 in minus cocer with dirt compact. When hole dry out cover with what you use as top layer. This will form a cap and short of backhoe or cat will stay, You dont want to have a large cement cap unless you plan to pave it later. Because if you leave it gravel road you will need to grade sometimes.

 

[LarryRB]

Jim,
I don't want to come across here as a smart --s. However, there is a reason "spoils" are re-piled somewhere and fresh fill brought in... Running the highway dept, if we moved large boulders from the any town dirt roads, which is done several times in any given year,, that spoil was brought back to the garage and fresh fill takes it's place. Replacing virgin dug dirt with the same, for some reason will never settle again.. Have some other gravel dropped next to this hole, dig out the original spoils and push the fresh stuff in. Put in a foot or so, and compact by rollng the hoe bucket, another foot, same thing, and keep going till your 6" above grade, Roll it with the tires several times and you should be 3" or so above grade. Within two weeks, it will be back to grade... I've tried several times over the years to replace fresh dug spoils and replace the same., EVERY SINGLE instance, I ended up returning, dig it out, and replace with fresh. Not good when several homes depend on a road and a "jelly hole" is permanent,