New Roads/Gravel Pad

[Indiana Jim]

Greetings all

GREAT WEBSITE!!!! This is my first post. Have been lurking for a few weeks and am really getting educated on some subjects of interest on this website. Thanks so much for all you guys input.

My question is: I own a campground and am in the process of adding more campsites and extending the gravel roads. Along with my MF243 with turf tires, I also own a JCB backhoe(not real good at operating it), a small dump truck, a Danuser? box blade w/ hydraulics and a rear scraper blade purchased at TSC. I need to scrape about 8" or so from about 800' of road about 12' wide to lay gravel for campsite pads and driveways. Is this doable with equipment I have or should I hire local with dozer for removal? I'd like to tackle this but I am kinda newbe with ground excavation work.

Looking forward to hearing how you would tackle this project.

Thanks

Jim in Indiana

 

[lhfarm]

Greetings all

GREAT WEBSITE!!!! This is my first post. Have been lurking for a few weeks and am really getting educated on some subjects of interest on this website. Thanks so much for all you guys input.

My question is: I own a campground and am in the process of adding more campsites and extending the gravel roads. Along with my MF243 with turf tires, I also own a JCB backhoe(not real good at operating it), a small dump truck, a Danuser? box blade w/ hydraulics and a rear scraper blade purchased at TSC. I need to scrape about 8" or so from about 800' of road about 12' wide to lay gravel for campsite pads and driveways. Is this doable with equipment I have or should I hire local with dozer for removal? I'd like to tackle this but I am kinda newbe with ground excavation work.

Looking forward to hearing how you would tackle this project.

Thanks

Jim in Indiana

Jim,
There is a ton of information on dealing with gravel roads/drives here. Do a search on gravel road, driveway and/or drives and you will find hundreds of articles. There is information on preparation, using the equipment you have (especially the box blade) and types of materials to use.

One thing that makes this site so useful is that there are over 2 million articles. If I have a question, I'll try to do a search before I post. Most of the time there is information that will either answer my question or help me refine it.

Be sure to take pictures and post them here. More importantly have some fun!

 

[jinman]

Jim, :welcome: to TBN. What do you plan to do with the 8" of dirt removed from your road surface? Are you aware that you are talking about approximately 250 yards of native dirt from that 12' x 800' roadbed? That's a lot of material, and managing it is gonna be a big job. When it is loose dirt, it will be more like 300 yards or even more. Other than that, I think you have plenty of equipment to do the job as long as you are not in a really rocky area where you'll need to remove a bunch of rocks. For earth moving and smoothing work, it seems to me that you have all the tools you need. You may want to find a better tool for smoothing out your roadway than the boxblade, but the box will work great for doing the initial gravel spreading. You may want some kind of drag for finishing the gravel off. Old chainlink fence works well.