Neighbor's road repair...

[DaveinVa]

Re: Neighbor\'s road repair...

Michael,

I live less than 1500 feet from a harbor on the Chesapeake Bay. My land is 5 to 8 feet above sea level. Gravel or oyster shells sink below the surface rapidly on our saturated land. I put in a 1500 foot road to the barn and I used the road fabric with a base of broken up concrete. Worked great. Water passes through and the concrete and rock stay in place. The fabric cost me about $.80 a foot if I remember correctly. The fabric was 12 feet wide and so easy to handle that my wife and I completed the job in very little time.

Dave

 

[rameye]

Re: Neighbor\'s road repair...

Hazmat,

thanks for posting that document....it's just what I've been looking for!

I have a driveway that is nothing more more than a black diamond trail /forums/images/graemlins/shocked.gif...this will help.

Rameye

 

[Currmudgeon]

Re: Neighbor\'s road repair...

There are two keys to making a good gravel road; getting a good subgrade and good drainage.

First the drainage. A gravel road needs a way to get the water off the road and away from the road. Usually, this means crowning the doad and ditching the edges. The ditches sgould be deep enough to be below the top of subgrade, so the subgrade can be drieds out. The ditches need to be carried to someplace where they discharge, or all you have is long ponds or frog habitat.

This is the hard part, as it's not always easy to figure out how to get the water across the road and away from the road. It may take a lot of work, but it's worth it. In the case of too many amateur built roads, the road is the watercourse, and it's a losing battle.

If you don't get the water off the road and out of the subgrade, the material will become soggy and turn to mud. You will then have a stone-eater.

The subgrade is the dirt under the gravel portion of the road. It should be dry and firm. If you build a gravel road on bad subgrade, traffic will tend to pound the stone down into the mud. You're filling the ocean with a bucket, in that case. The ocean always wins.

There are many ways of stabilizing lousy subgrade, from building graded filter layers over it, to modifying it with tilled-in lime. The simplest way is probably to put down geotextile filter fabric and build the gravel road on top of that. The fabric keeps the rock out of the mud and vice versa.

You'll need about six to eight inches of well graded stone to make a decent road. Less than that, and it's very difficult to grade. Call the County Engineer and find out what they use for road stone. There are many different names for the same stuff. The gravel pit can tell you, too.

Individual potholes can be fixed by undercutting to kinds solid material, installing geotextile, and backfilling with road stone. Place it in 8 inch lifts and compact each lift. For massive fills, the three-inch stone is a good way to go, with road stone on top. Many contractors consider it a panacea for bad spots. It's also usually a bit cheaper than road stone, as the gradation isn't so critical.

You will be amazed at how many yards of stone a road will swallow.

 

[hazmat]

Re: Neighbor\'s road repair...

<font color="blue">thanks for posting that document....it's just what I've been looking for!

I have a driveway that is nothing more more than a black diamond trail ...this will help. </font>

You're welcome. Be sure to keep it hush hush - we don't want the state of maine to find out that non-natives are using their information /forums/images/graemlins/tongue.gif

 

[sanmigmike]

Long time since I have been here. The neighbor turned into Frankenneighbor, on another thread. Anyway on his section of the road in the past three and a half years he has scraped the top, unable to really do much and hand thrown some gravel in the bigger (3 feet dia, and larger) holes which as you might guess comes right out. Our section is in good shaped.

Yesterday the forecast didn't seem too wet so I went out and broke down some jumbo potholes and smothed some things out on the section of the road closest to our property. Neighbor on the other side, has complained about this section and so has the fire department, our Range Rover doesn't scrape across it but almost everything else does and it is rough.

Anyway got it looking a little better and of course since then it has been raining. Poor drainage so that area is partlialy flooded (part of the whole problem). So when it dries out will try to hit it again.

Since is is a low spot and his section of road tends to be low, not built up and not crowned or sloped I would guess the long term idea might be build up that area a lot or run a culvert under the area that is slightly higher and gets water on the uphill area standing on the side and on the road?

I was waiting for him to come out and yell at me since I was working on what "he claims" is his property. However he is growing grapes on my property and has said about four different things about it starting with "No I am not" to "the other owner let me do it!" The people on our otherside still do not understand that he is using their land to grow grapes. I was going to tell him that I kind of thought it was my land and if it isn't, have it surveyed and marked...just what he told me to do. LOL Funny thing is that when I first met him he told me that he really respected and valued property rights...what he really meant is that he values his rights and screw you.

The other thing I learned is that in our area you need to have a permit to do anything besides residental farming...forestry on our respective bits of property. Wholesale wine bottles is not either one. The county guy asked if I had been getting the yearly permit renewal letters. Not in three and a half years. No permit for that use (or anything else aside from it being FF land), a violation in the past for improper use. Also to get a permit off road parking for employees on at least gravel and limits on traffic and size of trucks. So code enforcement will be taking a look at it and since the county already has had trouble with him at another near by location as well as this location (stuff not on the terms of his permits) I think they understand how to deal with him.

Funny thing is that if he was being honest and ethical I would not care about his business so by being a jerk he will be dealing with the county rather than me... All I was doing was just trying to get along.

Any I guess now I need how to get better drainage to keep that part of the road dryer. The pity is seeing his section of the road going from poor to horrible when mine has stayed good to great with little real effort or expense on my part.

 

[shvl73]

Its too bad to have creeps for neighbors. If you are sure of the property line and can find the boundry markers, I'd be tempted to run a line between them to show the property division, then take the tractor with cutter attached and help him out by mulching his grapes.
Good luck.

 

[tallyho8]

The pity is seeing his section of the road going from poor to horrible when mine has stayed good to great with little real effort or expense on my part.

You might not like what I have to say, but in all fairness, this is how it seems to me.

Your neighbor "A" uses his section of the road but does not use your section "B" or your other neighbor's section "C".

You use your section "B" and your neighbor's "A" section but not the "C" section.

Your other neighbor uses his "C" section of the road plus your "B" section and the "A" section.

Since your neighbor "C" is the only one who uses his section of road, it should stay in good repair and he is the only one who should pay any upkeep on it.

Since you and your neighbor "C" are the only ones using your section "B" of the road, then the 2 of you should be responsible for maintaining it.

Since all 3 of you use section "A" of the road, all 3 of you should be responsible for maintaining that section, not just neighbor "A".

Remember, neighbor "A" is the one who has to put up with all the inconvienience of having the other 2 neighbors drive up and down the drive past his home all the time and he never drives by yours.

Neighbor "C" should pay for maintaining all of section "C" of the road, 1/2 of section "B" and 1/3 of section "A", equaling 11/18 of the total cost.

Neighbor "B" should pay for maintaining 1/2 of section "B" and 1/3 of section "A", equaling 5/18 of the total cost.

Neighbor "A" should pay for maintaing 1/3 of section "A" equaling 2 /18 of the total cost.

Regardless of the terms of an ill-conceived and poorly written agreement, this is the FAIR way to divide the costs of maintaining the drive. Each neighbor paying for his pro-rata use of the drive. I don't blame neighbor "A" for being reluctant to pay for maintaining 2/3 of the drive that he never uses nor more than 1/3 of the part of the drive that all 3 of you use.

I speak from experience when I say this because I have a similar situation where I own house "A" and "C" and another neighbor owns house "B". This is a sad situation created by poor future planning when family attempts to divide family land for family usage and not expecting family members to sell to outsiders in the future. You can save your grandchildren a lot of misery if you divide your land properly, creating public roads which will be maintained by the county, with no easements to encroach on future generations. Easements and private roads ALWAYS wind up causing friction between neighbors as some always feel that they are paying more than their fair share, being inconvienienced more, and not agreeing with the others on how to maintain the road.

The neighbor growing grapes on your property is a completely different situation that has to be handled differently, and should have no bearing on this driveway situation.