New Driveway and Polebarn

jeepcat · Apr 12, 2011

AWESOME thread!

I found this doing a search for Cleary buildings. I am close to trading with them on a 42 x 56 x 12 energy mizer and I am glad to hear you had a good experience with them.

Moreover, my building is going to be built into a corner cut. I was working on my grading contours yesterday - but after reading / seeing all of this I might need to be a little less cocky about my ability to get water away from the shop LOL.

Thanks!

rswyan · Jul 3, 2012

Well .... it's time to bring this one back to life like .... Lazarus rising from the tomb .... time to .... git 'er done ....

I've actually been working on it for the last month or so .... just been so focused on making it happen that I haven't really been taking a whole lot of pictures or posting about it ....

I've been doing some observing .... and contemplating things .... and have made some decisions/changes regarding how I want to finish off the exterior perimeter:

1. There were three smaller trees (5" to 8" diameter, 25' to 30' tall) on my property on the backside of the barn that I was originally trying to keep. Since the barn is in essentially in a wooded area and surrounded on all sides by trees (the morning and afternoon sure are nice), and since removing these three trees will allow me to extend the slope over a greater distance and reduce the acuteness of the incline (which ought to make it easier to get some grass growing on it and reduce washouts) I decided to remove them:

I also removed the ash tree with the two trunks in the center (background) of the last image .... and I'm not done yet ....

Have a couple of larger poplars I will remove for sure and maybe a few others as well .... easier to take them down now versus having to remove them from the barn after they have fallen.

The change in elevation from the surrounding grade on the backside of the polebarn varies from 5'+ on the north end, to around 3' or less on the south end.

rswyan · Jul 3, 2012

Here's a little update on the drainage issues:

For the most part it hasn't been too bad .... on the surface, the rear (east side) has pretty good flow from the north end to the south end (which is where I want the water to go)

There is one spot right at the northeast corner where there is a often a small, shallow puddle after it rains - this should be easy to handle with a little finish grading ....

There is a trail (visible in the third photo above - the tractor is parked on it) which is on the property line - the area to the right in the photo (which is my neighbors property) generally slopes slightly towards my property and the barn. The solution for this will be to grade the slope back to the trail, leaving it (the trail) about 6' wide (wide enough for my tractor and the neighbors Gator) and build up a berm on the trail, thereby sloping the trail back towards the neighbors property .... which will cause any surface runoff from his land to run down the trail past the barn area and into the woods below the barn ....

rswyan · Jul 3, 2012

The north side of the barn (just visible on the right in the first photo above) is more problematic - it catches surface flow from perhaps as far as 200 or 300 yards away .... during a heavy rain the runoff coming down can be considerable. The change in elevation on the north side varies from 5'+ to probably 7'+ above grade at the polebarn .... this change (the slope) occurs over about a 30' to 35' area.

Heavy surface runoff + steeper slope = potential problem with washouts and getting grass to grow to hold the soil in place.

The solution I came up with was to try and eliminate the runoff before it got to the slope by installing a pair of catch basins, at two locations up at the edge of the woods, just at the top of the slope.

I cobbled the catch basins up by cutting a 5' long chunk of 12" smooth bore PVC culvert I had lying around in half. For the one I'm using a cast iron grate I had lying around that fits perfectly inside the culvert (held up by a couple of pieces of 1/2" rebar), the other one I had to spring for a plastic grate designed specifically for this purpose. Each basin is drained by a 6" pipe, which are joined downstream with a wye, with the 6" line eventually running into the concrete catch basin at the northwest corner of the barn:

rswyan · Jul 3, 2012

In order to reduce the steepness of the slope where it's the worst - the northeast corner - I decided that I'm going to have to do a short retaining wall on that corner. The retaining wall will be built out of rock which was obtained when we excavated the pad for the barn.

This will allow me to channel any runoff away from that corner, which has been problematic in terms of washouts and erosion - and in terms of moistness in that corner near the barn - towards the concrete catch basin on the northwest corner - or down the backside of the barn to the south toward the woods.

I'm not totally happy about it for a couple of reasons:

1. the additional labor involved, and

2. a 3'+ dropoff creates a hazard when operating equipment near it ....

But I don't see any real way around it .... clearing more trees off the north side and attempting to extend the slope (to reduce the steepness of the grade) is problematic - because the further north you go, the more the elevation increases ....

Following another TBN'ers lead, I've dug a channel at the bottom of the cut for the wall to seat the base course of rocks in to secure them, and hopefully reduce any movement from freeze/thaw cycles (I don't want to have to do this again in a few years):

I'll use geo-tex landscape fabric and possibly gravel behind the rocks that make up the wall to try and avoid problems .... might even stick some 4" perforated flex at the bottom to facilitate it draining.

rswyan · Jul 3, 2012

One other thing worth mentioning .... hindsight being 20/20 and all ....

About a month or so ago we had a pretty good storm come thru and we got dumped on pretty good .... had about 3/4" of inch of rain in 30 minutes or less ....

I made it point to stay out at the barn when this came thru so I could see what was happening and see how things were working .... even brought the umbrella ....

First thing I noticed was that on the north end of the barn there was water overflowing out of the pipes that the gutter downspouts connect to .... really bad on the northeast downspout and not quite as much on the northwest one ....

The gutters on the barn are 6" K-style, drained by 3"x4" downspouts. Each downspout should be able to handle 1200 sq. ft. of roof .... and there are 4 of them .... 1200 sq. ft. x 4 = 4800 sq. ft of roof (the building only has a 3024 sq. ft. footprint - so even with the additional square footage from the roof slope I should be golden)

The hard line (4") for the downspout in that northeast corner is tied into a 4" line .... which also has four 4" surface drains feeding it, down the line after the downspout ....

BAD IDEA ....

Normally, for most rainfall rates around here, it probably wouldn't be a problem .... maybe - but for a heavy rainfall having five 4" openings feeding a 4" line is a problem .... (and the problem was exacerbated by the fact that the 4" drain line was partially blocked from soil that had entered the surface drains due to erosion on the slope)

I was trying to be cheap and didn't fully think it through at the time .... :confused2:

The immediate handle was to install a 4" line for the northeast corner downspout (separate from the surface drains), and run it over near the northwest corner downspout, then dump that into a 6" line before the northwest downspout and connect the northwest downspout to the 6" line.

Actually, the way I constructed it, I have the downspouts tied into both their own line - and the surface drain line - with gravity and the way it was put together favoring the downspouts own line .... hopefully it will never back up again (since the downspouts are right next to the buildings corner posts)

There was no issue on the south end of the barn - there are no surface drains there, and the downspouts are on there own dedicated line ....

Moral of story: When it comes to drainage plumbing, the amount of egress should be at least equal to, if not greater than, the amount of ingress .... :thumbsup:

rswyan · Jul 3, 2012

One upside to extending out the area for the slope on the backside of the barn, and doing the retaining wall is that it yielded a substantial amount of clay and some very beautiful sandy loam which I can use as fill inside the barn:

One of the other changes I decided on is about the slab around the outside. Some where along the line I had decided that I would put a 5' slab all the way around the outside perimeter, for outside storage and to keep water away from the building.

I'm still going to do 5' on the rear, but I've decided that it would be nice to make them a little larger on the north and south ends of the building.

I'm going to shoot for a 10' wide slab on north end, where I'm limited by the slope .... and 18' or better or the south end .... big enough to park a vehicle on and be able to get around it to work on it.

To that end I've been adding fill (about 1 1/2' on the southwest corner) and compacting it on the south side.