Fired Road contractor. Build it myself?

[Opti-Mist]

I'm with ovrszd. Without proper ditches the road does become the ditch. I lived in a township which had a ton of dirt roads. At a meeting with the manager of the county road commission, he asked, "What do the residents want"? I responded "Roads which shed water rather than convey water". Nuff said.

 

[teg]

Just go ahead and pave the driveway with gold, don't forget the geotextile road underlayment, too.

I don't have any photos of my "ditch" of a road, minimum maintenance for the 10 years I've owned it.

We definitely have two different road building camps. I'd rather save money vs. spend my money overbuilding a road, have fun. Unsubscribing...

 

[ovrszd]

No need for anyone to "drop out" of this discussion. No argument that I know of. A simple difference of opinion based on a complete difference of goals. No worries here.

I've never saw a properly constructed road that needed any type of underlayment. Only roads that don't control drainage need such things. And underbuilt roads are always the most expensive in the end.

As I've said more than once, I'm anxious to see the OP's end result.

 

[sixdogs]

You don't necessarily have to have a "ditch" but you do need sweeping grading to move the water away. I always do it that way and my only "ditch" is a gradual swale. Done right, you don't even notice the ground was done that way to move water away. It looks better and the gradual swale won't wash in the rain. Ditches are hard to maintain while proper grading just involves mowing the grass.

 

[ovrszd]

You don't necessarily have to have a "ditch" but you do need sweeping grading to move the water away. I always do it that way and my only "ditch" is a gradual swale. Done right, you don't even notice the ground was done that way to move water away. It looks better and the ditch won't wash in the rain. Ditches are hard to maintain while proper grading just involves mowing the grass.

You and Eddie. Always saying things with such grace while making the same point I try to make. I gotta learn that trait.

 

[bigdeano]

It all depends on how absorbent the ground is. Look at it after a heavy rain and see if water is running off. A lot of times in forested areas the water soaks in. No use digging a grand canyon ditch if it's not needed.

 

[buckeyefarmer]

Sounds like a fun project. I would tackle it with a blade, based on your pics of what the dozed has done. From the responses, probably only a few has ever built a road.
Once you get the dirt graded right, the gravel is spread by tailgating it.
My dad did road construction, maintenance for around 40 yrs. Done some myself back in my younger days...

 

[MtnViewRanch]

I have a couple of things to say.

First, no one has mentioned the cost other than the OP firing the guy that was going to do the work for 10K. All of this costs $$$, doesn't matter who does the work, it still costs money. There was a thread years ago here telling the guy what he needed to do and not to do. I added up the costs mentioned for the size of his drive and if he listened to the people giving him all the advice, it was going to cost over a million dollars to build his drive way. Sometimes you just have to go the economy route and then do maintenance as needed.

Second thing, and this is directly for the OP. DO NOT get a 10 rear blade. It will be waaaaaaaaaaaay to much blade for your tractor. 10' rear blades are intended to be used with cat 3 sized machines, not medium sized cat 2 tractors. Not that you couldn't use it, but you would not be able to do any serious cutting with it. Definitely the tail wagging the dog sort of thing. I have a 75hp, 12,000lb tractor that I run a 9' blade with. It's all the tractor wants and more at certain times.

If your tires are loaded or if you will load them, then the 9' blade will be a good match, whatever blade you decide to get, be sure to get skid shoes for it, they make life much easier. Also learn how to make use of the draft control. You can make a cut as even as your dining room table if you learn how to use and adjust it for the conditions you are working in. :thumbsup:

 

[airbiscuit]

I live at the end of a 1/2 mile road. No side hills to speak of, but hills. It was basically a skidder trail to begin with, but a pretty decent gravel road now. The best advice I ever got is "Water's going to go where water wants to go". Once I accepted that, things went better. I just made sure it had places to go not on the road, and no long runs where it could pick up velocity.

It is obvious to me that the OP can handle equipment, so I have no doubt that he can do a nice job with that road. My point about having a dozer come in and do the rough grade, is how efficient they are. A newer Cat with whiz bang hydraulics and a multi tilt blade can do a lot of good work in a hurry. Then the OP can come in and do all the finish work.

If the OP wants to do everything from here on out, either to have fun or save money, that's cool - he's up to it. I've just seen that a good Cat operator can do a lot in a little time.

Finally, I've never regretted making a road a little wider.

 

[EddieWalker]

There is a big expense in moving dirt. Digging dirt is cheap and easy, but moving it is where you eat up all your time and spend all your money. I personally bought a single axle F600 dump truck for $3,000 to move dirt. Depending on how far I'm moving the dirt, I can load it with my backhoe, get off the backhoe, get into the dump truck, drive it a thousand yards, dump it, drive back and get back on the backhoe in fifteen minutes. Four loads per hour, seven yards per load puts me over 200 yards in a busy day. With my Dad helping by driving the dump truck, we can do five loads in an hour.

I personally feel that this job will require a dump truck. I'm not a fan of dump trailers, but that would be better then nothing. You can sell it when you are done with it, but I've found that I use mine often enough that it's worth keeping around. Mine is a beater. It's not street legal and I'm always wrenching on it, but for the price, it's more then paid for itself.

My neighbor hires ten wheel dump trucks at $50 an hour to move dirt on his place. He moves a lot more dirt a lot faster then I can, but with two dump trucks moving ten yards per load, five loads per hour and renting an excavator at $100 to load them, he's paying $2 a yard to move dirt without doing any of it himself.