grading a long lane

[yanmars]

I have a 10 foot wide lane over 1700 feet long that will eventually be over 2000 feet. I have a 33 and 45 horsepower Cat 1 tractor. Would a box blade or angle blade or whatever be the best for light grading and maintaining the lane etc.
Any comments, suggestions, reasons would be appreciated. Thanks

 

[/pine]

[just a comment]

remember, it is best (whatever you grade with) to make the (storm water) run-off cross the road (into a ditch etc.) rather than "down the road"

 

[jenkinsph]

I would use a 6' landplane grader for this type of work, these work great for smoothing the surface, and bringing the gravel to the top. This has been discussed at great length on the TBN attachment forum. Anyone who builds roads frequently needs to have several implements including rearblade, boxblade and landplane.
I use a rearblade for ditching, crowning and shaping, a boxblade for ripping potholes amd moving large amounts of dirt a short distance, the landplane for smoothing and maintaining.

 

[Birdhunter1]

I have a 6' Landpride 3672 rear blade and a 7' boxblade. The box blade does have its place and when I built the driveway I used it alot. In 3 years I have used it once on the driveway to maintain it.
My rear blade however I have used quite a bit. As previously said keep a crown on the driveway and keep water to the sides and not running down the driveway. The rear blade I can offset to the side and roll any rock that gets pushed to the sides back into the center. I will drive the distance doing this on one side then the other. Once the rock is back into the center I set the blade back straight behind the tractor, reverse it (so as I am driving forward it is back dragging)... drive the distance of the driveway spreading the rock back into the wheel tracks then on the return trip I may polish up any places. Usually less than a 30 minute job for 2000' of driveway. Been here three years now and the first year i had to do more to it than the last year. This year I think I touched it up this spring to get any gravel that may have been pushed to the edges while removing snow back into the driveway.

The box blade is somewhere on the farm with weeds growing around it, haven't used it in a while, might actually be at my uncles place. For reference my tractor is a 45-50 hp utility 2wd tractor with a loader.

 

[94BULLITT]

Anyone who builds roads frequently needs to have several implements including rearblade, boxblade and landplane.

Plus a landscape rake is also useful for maintaining.

Do you need to move snow off this road? If not I would get a box blade first.

 

[/pine]

Plus a landscape rake is also useful for maintaining.

Do you need to move snow off this road? If not I would get a box blade first.

Agree and the rake would be my second or third choice after the rear blade...unless you are making a new road a plane is not really needed in most cases IMO...

 

[crazyal]

In the end I would want to own a grading scraper (land plane) for a road that long. But for building a road it wouldn't be the best choice. Ever since finishing building my driveway I haven't touched a boxblade. I was lucky and had a couple of friends who had them so finding one to borrow was easy. Both thought the BB was the greatest tool for driveway work until they actually used my GS and now they both are planning on buying or building one. Have you looked around to see what you can rent or borrow?

 

[Midniteoyl]

I have a 10 foot wide lane over 1700 feet long that will eventually be over 2000 feet. I have a 33 and 45 horsepower Cat 1 tractor. Would a box blade or angle blade or whatever be the best for light grading and maintaining the lane etc.
Any comments, suggestions, reasons would be appreciated. Thanks

How To - Tractor Land Plane - Gravel Road Maintenance - YouTube

 

[oosik]

My driveway is exactly one mile (a full section) long. It was built for me to access my property. I only use a back blade (Land Pride RB3596) to maintain it both summer and winter. Never used a box blade because I've not needed to move that much dirt, gravel etc. I reverse the blade and drag it forward to smooth in the spring while things are still damp. Later when it dries the backblade in its normal position & going forward causes "cupping" so the majority of maintenance is a spring time affair. We can get a lot of snow in the winter so the backblade removes the snow. I guess if I ever needed summer maintenance I would get some type of land plane. So far this procedure has worked fine for the 31 years I've lived here.

 

[Gordon Gould]

All good advise. A lot depends on the make up of your lane, it's steepness, and your local weather. A guy in Florida with a level pea stone drive who never plows snow would probably be satisfied with a rake while a guy up north with deep winter frost, which makes for muddy springs, and a hard packed gravel hilly drive needs more than a rake because he has to cut and move hard packed gravel to grade his road which a rake won't do by itself. I have such a road about a mile long, The lower half is a good road with a proper base and good gravel the upper half was a dirt logging road that I upgraded over time little by little by mixing in stone with the dirt. I used a rear blade for 10 years to maintain it. Then I got a land plane. Now I use both but mostly the land plane. It is a great maintenance tool.
There are lots of considerations. Check out what people around you with similar drives use and compare it to what has been said here, there is a lot of experience to read about here.
If you do much tractor work you will probably end up with several dirt tools. They all have there place and main specialty or purpose but they also can be used effecively in a wide range of work outside of there specialty. I would say the rear blade is the most general purpose and universal road tool. Buit it takes a lot of time and practice to develope the skill to use it at it's maximim potentential. The box blade is less universal but easier to master and better for moveing dirt than the blade. The land plane is surface maintenance only, leveling pot holes and wash board, rejuvinating and mixing gravel, and maitaining crowns. It is easiest and fastest to use by far so you can keep your road in better shape. By keeping the road in better shape you get less damage from storms or traffic.
This is just my opinion of course. Many have different ideas.

 

[oosik]

Well, Gordon, it would be very difficult to disagree with anything you have said. Your driveway looks like I wish mine did. I think the only similarity may be that they are both long. There are long sections on mine where the only thing covering the basaltic lava flow is six inches of gravel. A lot of my road maintenance is just trying to keep the gravel in place. Some of the drive goes thru meadows that seem to have no bottom in the spring. I'm just glad to have driveway access to my property and let it go at that.

 

[GGB]

I'll also suggest the land plane, provided your road is in reasonable condition. I had a box blade and two different rear blades, but after getting my road in decent shape, I kept the box blade to move grave when I have more delivered, but traded both rear blades for a new Land Pride land plane. I really like it, and so do my neighbors!

The advantage of a land plane is that it works somewhat like a road grader, where the blade "floats". With a rear blade, you are often creating exaggerated undulations from the tractor rising and falling with the minor dips and mounds in the road. A land plane with two blades will fill in the low spots and cut down the high spots without a lot of work. I'm sure a pro can get similar results to the land plane using just a rear blade by running the blade backwards, but a land plane will give most of us average guys better results in less time.

Again, this is all assuming that your road is decent to begin with-if not, you'll still want a box blade or rear blade. Besides, who doesn't want more "toys"?

Finally, remember to crown the road for runoff, and be sure to have enough gravel/rock to have something besides dirt to work with.

 

[coobie]

I have a 10 foot wide lane over 1700 feet long that will eventually be over 2000 feet. I have a 33 and 45 horsepower Cat 1 tractor. Would a box blade or angle blade or whatever be the best for light grading and maintaining the lane etc.
Any comments, suggestions, reasons would be appreciated. Thanks

I would buy a land plane.I used to have a box blade,now I bought a land plane.Better choice IMHO.coobie

 

[crazyal]

Well, Gordon, it would be very difficult to disagree with anything you have said. Your driveway looks like I wish mine did. I think the only similarity may be that they are both long. There are long sections on mine where the only thing covering the basaltic lava flow is six inches of gravel. A lot of my road maintenance is just trying to keep the gravel in place. Some of the drive goes thru meadows that seem to have no bottom in the spring. I'm just glad to have driveway access to my property and let it go at that.

The best thing you can do is to try to remove as much of the gravel in that muddy section as possible when it's dry in the summer (if it ever gets dry) and put down some road fabric. Then put the gravel back on top of it. The stuff is amazing.

 

[JerryK]

Not to hyjack the thread, but how does the landplane work for large turnaround areas??? I have about a 400' drive with about a 60' round turn around area in front of my barn. I would like to maintain the turnaround so it stays low spot free.. tending to always pull some of the excess gravel into the center instead of digging a pond... I have seen lots of discussions about drives, but not about large areas... or do you just treat it like a horse arena and it's no big deal... and I am not thinking straight.

 

[Gordon Gould]

Not to hyjack the thread, but how does the landplane work for large turnaround areas??? I have about a 400' drive with about a 60' round turn around area in front of my barn. I would like to maintain the turnaround so it stays low spot free.. tending to always pull some of the excess gravel into the center instead of digging a pond... I have seen lots of discussions about drives, but not about large areas... or do you just treat it like a horse arena and it's no big deal... and I am not thinking straight.

If you want to make or keep an area flat then a land plane is the thing to use. Steve uses his homemade land planes for landscaping work where he needs a large flat area. I use mine on my parking space in front of the garage as well as the road. The parking/turn around space is about 30' X 60". It is also good for sod control in areas like that.

 

[94BULLITT]

If you want to make or keep an area flat then a land plane is the thing to use. Steve uses his homemade land planes for landscaping work where he needs a large flat area. I use mine on my parking space in front of the garage as well as the road. The parking/turn around space is about 30' X 60". It is also good for sod control in areas like that.

How high did you make your sides on your LP?

 

[/pine]

I have a 10 foot wide lane over 1700 feet long that will eventually be over 2000 feet. I have a 33 and 45 horsepower Cat 1 tractor. Would a box blade or angle blade or whatever be the best for light grading and maintaining the lane etc.
Any comments, suggestions, reasons would be appreciated. Thanks

IMO...some of the best money you can spend to help maintain a dirt/gravel lane is not an attachment...it's hydraulic top and tilt cylinders and then attachments (box blade, rear blade, rake) that allow you to take advantage of the T&T... secondly attachments that can angle (rear blade, rake) are paramount to getting professional results without spending a lot of time out of the seat making manual adjustment and hand raking spoils etc...

 

[NHbotanut]

I also have a long driveway. I tried the rear blade, but it did too much damage. I bought a landscape rake, but it just bounced off the hardpack. It did pull the loose material in from the sides very nicely.

I then bought the land plane last year as the driveway took a real beating over the winter. I couldn't be any happier with it. It is very easy to use and master. I even fixed the parking lots at my daughters school. They were 100 x 200 and 50 x 400. I had to use the scarifiers as they were in real bad shape. Took about 3 hours, and they had brand new parking lots.

Here are some pics from my driveway.

 

[crazyal]

At the top of my driveway I have a large parking area for the trucks, maybe 60 x 60. I put a slight slope to it so water will drain off to one side. When I use the GS on it I make sure to use the angled blades to get the gravel to migrate back to the higher side.