fixing my ruts at my deer shack road

[buddha21]

my deer shack road is a old loggers road and over years the ruts are about 1.5 to 2 feet deep. i was thinking about plowing or tilling up the road. in the past years i added rock to the ruts but there still deep. the ground holds moister in the spring and a good rain fall. i would like any ideas that wouldn't break the bank thanks.

 

[scesnick]

How long is the road? One thing my grandfather did to fix our farms 2.5 mile dirt road ( where I now live and took over road duties)which got really rutted up was to get a few railroad ties and chain them together then add some weight to it and pull it behind a tractor (or truck). It worked well after a few passes.
But, if the road holds moisture you gonna have to take care of that issue first. Tilling it up would be disasterous in my opinion since it does hold water somewhat.

I would use a 3pt. scraper blade and angled to it's max and make some drainage ditches where the water is the worst. Then I would use the scraper AND the railroad ties and smooth it out. Maybe even put a few loads of gravel in the areas that stay wet the longest...
Ideally you would get a backhoe in there for the ditches and running pipe under the road for drainage but you said you wanted to do this on the cheap. I can deffinitely relate to that...

 

[MarkV]

Welcome to the forum! Ruts that are 11/2' to 2' deep almost call for a dozer. Now back to on the cheap. I think I would use a blade or box blade to start knocking the center down into the ruts with multiple passes. Even if I could cut it in one pass I would still do multiple passes to compact the fill. Of course if that works and you have a flat road you are only half way there. The road bed has to be higher than what is beside it to get the water off. That either means the road is the high point or you have ditches for the water to run to. Sounds like in your case that calls for ditches. I've had some success cutting ditches with a rear blade that will tilt if your soil isn't too hard and rocky.

MarkV

 

[beenthere]

And a big nuisance will be the tree roots when trying to pull dirt together in a woods road. But taming the water issue with building ditches as mentioned, would be the goal to fix the ruts. A rear blade would be the cheapest, a single bottom moldboard plow might be handy, a FEL with bucket a must, a box blade nice to have too, a bulldozer with 6 way blade, and the back hoe the ultimate.
So, what might it be? Some pics of the ruts would be great.

(this thread started by the OP in "new member introductions" should get moved to a more appropriate Forum in TBN)

 

[HCJtractor]

Cheapest is to use a box blade and hopefully a big enough tractor to move some dirt. We spent many hours re-contouring our roads this way. The idea is to study how the water flows, as this is what causes ruts. Until you control and direct the runoff, you will be fighting a losing battle. Start at the high point and start creating a channel or ditch to divert the water off the roads, as this many take many passes with the box blade. Every 50 to 100 yards, try to make the drainage ditch sweep away from the road, by building humps or waterbars. THe idea is to reduce the quantity and speed of the water. Make a channel for the water where you want it, away from the road. Of course these ditches will deepen with time and other minor ditches or ruts will form over time, so this is a never-ending battle. Simply said, try to make the road the high point and let the water run beside the road, not across or over it. You may have to dig some drainage ditches also to drain low spots to keep the water from collecting and sitting on your road. You can do all of this with a boxblade, but is is a slow process. It often takes dozens of passes to move dirt from the road gutters to the crown of the road. Of course in the real world, this is done with a dozer, a road grader, and a backhoe, but if you are like me, the cost can't be justified. You can do it fairly well with a tractor and a box blade but it takes lots of time. We were also fortunate to have a grapple, so in many areas we uprooted trees and widened or moved the road to a better spot to maintain.

 

[buddha21]

thanks for all the feed back

 

[schmism]

i would add material. any tool that is used to try to take existing material from either the edges or the center hump and "fill in:" the ruts will just result in a road that sits below grade. = holds water = very poor road.

you want your road to be ABOVE the normal surrounding grade so the water runs off. This means ADDING material to the road to bring it UP! Some of that material can come from ditches you cut alongside the road, piling all the ditch material you removed onto the road which creates a lower ditch for the water and at the same time raising the height of the road.

 

[MtnViewRanch]

If you would, please let us know what tractor you have and what implements. This info will really help us help you. If you don't have a tractor, we need to know that also.

 

[crazyal]

I'm not sure how many people hunt with you but I would try to take up a collection and rent a small dozer.

 

[forgeblast]

as a temp fix, we used a pull behind disker hooked up to an atv, it moved some of the compacted materials and then we used a bucket on a skidsteer to smooth. works in areas that are staying pretty dry. the wet areas the water has to be delt with first.