Private Gravel Road Woes

[dave1949]

Roads aren't cheap, that's for sure. 12 or 16 yard loads of stone doesn't go very far if the road is in rough shape.

Maybe the 'old guy' does know what is needed, just has no budget or equipment to do it with. If he is volunteering his time on the effort at least he cares a bit. I would start by talking to him to see what the history of the road is, what sort of base material it has, what he would do if he could, etc.

Those planes, graders and/or rippers aren't going to work if there is no gravel base to fluff up and grade. Only more material can fix that.

Someone asked if you need a tractor for other purposes? If you need a tractor, then doing the work yourself becomes a lot easier. Even if you only fill potholes with fresh gravel on the section of road you use, that would be something to start with and would be easy seat time on a tractor with a front-end loader. Not a real fix, but not a waste either.

 

[ecbaatz]

I live in the same situation with a gravel road:thumbdown:. Neighbor who lives 660-feet from the pavement bought one of these little DR Power Grader. I laughed at it, I thought he threw his money away! Boy was I wrong. I found a good deal on a used one. I have three grandsons who live behind me, now the middle grandson grades the road from their house past mine to the one neighbor about 1,000-feet, and he grades to the pavement. These things are amazing!:cool2:
DR Power Grader (Driveway Grader) | DR Power Equipment

I have one also, 48" but wish I had got the bigger one as I have a new tractor to pull it with. Before I was using an atv. It works great, battery is not the best. I just ran wire to tire into the atv (now tractor) 12 volt system so I don't worry about the battery any more. Do get the pull behind screen with it.

 

[timswi]

I feel the OP's pain. Had to buy my BX23 and the RTV1100 just to maintain our road. $1000 a year in gravel and I get no property tax break at all...:mur:

 

[DB Pilot]

Got to recommend the EA land leveler. :2cents: watch their video for sure to get proper angle of attack. :thumbsup: I think the land leveler pulls up lost gravel and covers the larger rocks. I really like mine. But do not buy a smaller cheaper light duty land leveler/driveway maintainer. :thumbdown: I got no reaction from my better half when I bought mine and big smiles from her when I smoothed out 1000' of 6" rutted driveway. Also saved a bundle on fuel and time compared to scraper blade and rake method. Maybe after your neighbors see the results they will chip in.

 

[teg]

...The road appeared to be in pretty decent condition when we purchased, but it was summertime and the road had clearly been recently attended to...

I have no doubt that the seller "touched up" the road to sell the property. Most likely they did not actually address any of the real problems. Hiring someone might actually just do the same, touch it up to make it look nice. Might even be the same guy...

$2-3k doesn't really sound bad if they actually fix it correctly. BUT even if they fix it, it has to be maintained, any problems areas need to be corrected or they just turn into larger problems (which is, I guess, where you are now).

I would check into the "unofficial" HOA... who collects the money? and how do you get things done with the HOA.

 

[brettski]

350 tons, which would be about 700,000 lbs.

What about 2.25 million pounds?
Driveway development

I am almost afraid to think about how much it cost these people to have their "driveway" put in. I always figured about $40,000.00 or so.

lol...kinda
Nah, don't be fearful. Just make sure your credit rating is strong. When we did that driveway, some 8 or 9 years ago, I recall the base rock priced at about $10 per ton del'd. With the cost of the dozer and track hoe, I think the entire driveway racked up somewhere in the $15 - 20k range. Of course, this included removing a bunch of timber. To this day, we still have done nothing more with the driveway. We can still drive in a sedan, but there are a lot of lower spots that could use some touch-up.

 

[MinnesotaEric]

Hello,

We recently moved to a more remote area than we are used to, due to my husband's job. We purchased a lovely home....on an AWFUL road, at least in our estimation (I've heard there are worse; I'd hate to see it). It is ruddy, washboarding, etc. We were a little ignorant in making this purchase and weren't properly advised, and hence purchased land on a private road with NO ROAD MAINTENANCE AGREEMENT. Ugh. There is an "unofficial" HOA that collects a small amount of dues (about $200/year from 12ish houses), but it doesn't appear to be sufficient to care for the road properly. The road appeared to be in pretty decent condition when we purchased, but it was summertime and the road had clearly been recently attended to.

Here's my big question: what do we need to do to get this road in proper working order? The current "caretaker" is old, and I suspect he doesn't really know what he is doing. We've gotten some estimates, but these guys want thousands of dollars to help us with just small sections--the more problematic--parts of our road. Like $2000-$3000 for about 600 ish feet. The road, in total, is around 0.3 miles (up to our house, anyway). We're willing to invest some money in this endeavor, knowing that many of the rest of the neighbors will probably refuse to contribute anything more than their current dues. Many of the houses on our road are vacation homes, and the folks that own them don't appear to be there often enough to care. We both have 4 wheel drive, so it's not a huge access issue for us, but it would be awesome to have friends/family over without having to worry if they can make it up the road.

We're in a mountainous area--Western NC--so the road is sloped in some areas--and fairly steep in one section. We've thought about paving, but I doubt we could afford it considering we'd probably have to bear the burden alone....many one day, but not anytime soon. We think we could rent a tractor and perhaps tackle this ourselves to save some $, but we definitely need some tips/help. If that works out, we may invest in purchasing a tractor.

Any advice would be MUCH appreciated. Thank you in advance!

Burnsville, MN?

You hire me to sort your road with my new, epic box scraper.

 

[joeyd]

Sasha -

I live on a private road with two spur roads to other properties about 3+ miles in total and we do have a road maintenance agreement. It costs us about $3-4000 per year just to have the roads graded, crowned, rolled and some ditches cleaned out. We have been adding about $4000 per year in gravel over the last 4-5 years (approx. $425 per load / 23 tons) to improve the main road. We have 20 property owners paying into the work, only 9 families are full time and one is half time. Better roads increase everyone's property values.

 

[SPYDERLK]

Hello,

We recently moved to a more remote area than we are used to, due to my husband's job. We purchased a lovely home....on an AWFUL road, at least in our estimation (I've heard there are worse; I'd hate to see it). It is ruddy, washboarding, etc. We were a little ignorant in making this purchase and weren't properly advised, and hence purchased land on a private road with NO ROAD MAINTENANCE AGREEMENT. Ugh. There is an "unofficial" HOA that collects a small amount of dues (about $200/year from 12ish houses), but it doesn't appear to be sufficient to care for the road properly. The road appeared to be in pretty decent condition when we purchased, but it was summertime and the road had clearly been recently attended to.

Here's my big question: what do we need to do to get this road in proper working order? The current "caretaker" is old, and I suspect he doesn't really know what he is doing. We've gotten some estimates, but these guys want thousands of dollars to help us with just small sections--the more problematic--parts of our road. Like $2000-$3000 for about 600 ish feet. The road, in total, is around 0.3 miles (up to our house, anyway). We're willing to invest some money in this endeavor, knowing that many of the rest of the neighbors will probably refuse to contribute anything more than their current dues. Many of the houses on our road are vacation homes, and the folks that own them don't appear to be there often enough to care. We both have 4 wheel drive, so it's not a huge access issue for us, but it would be awesome to have friends/family over without having to worry if they can make it up the road.

We're in a mountainous area--Western NC--so the road is sloped in some areas--and fairly steep in one section. We've thought about paving, but I doubt we could afford it considering we'd probably have to bear the burden alone....many one day, but not anytime soon. We think we could rent a tractor and perhaps tackle this ourselves to save some $, but we definitely need some tips/help. If that works out, we may invest in purchasing a tractor.

Any advice would be MUCH appreciated. Thank you in advance!

Since youve called it your road Im going to assume its on your property. ... Buy a small tractor WITH loader and a small field drag as an implement. These will be useful for many things on your land. -- When the ground is damp not wet use these to excessively disturb the existing rd surface. Fill the ruts with this mix then drag to smooth it. ... Then, the absolute best tool you have is your road vehicle. Make the driveway wide enuf that you can run its wheels over any part of it -- your wheels move the material down and to the side. Pack the driveway by driving on it, choosing your path to contour it according to drainage needs. Where more material is needed adjust with the loader or a hand rake. After any appreciable rain drive minimally until it has soaked in. - Never thru puddles. Then while damp drive next to where the ruts [were] to compress material into the ruts. Every trip down the drive produces automatic maintenance. Have a light coating of #57 gravel applied by dumptruck. Have another load delivered and dumped in a pile for you to use to further tailor the drive. Always mix in base fines when filling a depression, then top lightly with gravel. Youll get the hang of it. If driven intelligently you will soon need very little maintenance per se. Your gravel pile will then last 2-3 yrs.

,,,If your drive is significantly shared and driven regularly by others you may have to smack them around a bit to get them to drive on it correctly. Failing this your intelligent driving proportion will not make a decisive difference and you will absorb much more maintenance chore .

Good luck!
,,,larry

 

[PILOON]

Where I am we had a community road about 1 mile long in hilly terrain that would go wash board over time.
We fabricated an 8' X 8' drag that had 3 blades angled in different directions made of 6 x 6 oak beams with 3/8" cutting edges that were lag bolted in place.
We would drag that 'drag' about 3 times a year with an old Willis jeep at about 8-10 MPH and ended up with a near perfect finish every time.
That old drag served us for some 10 years until the city took over the road.
They now use a huge grader that can not match what we did with our home made rig.
Our efforts merely cost us about 2 hours of time at every grading event part of which was to consume the suds for the volunteers.

A modern version of that old drag would be a welded structure instead of bolted up wood.
The cross sections were at different angles to each other to enable the loose material to flow from side to side and fill gaps.
In sum it acted somewhat more like a land plane.
The main problem was that once we graded folks drove faster and created washboard mainly on hills.
It worked and was cheap to build and use.