Grading Repair and upkeep of dirt roads

[BigTee]

I'm looking for any tips or tricks on repairing and upkeep of dirt roads. I recently purchased a small farm, around 50 acres, that has 2 roads in to it. Both are just dirt roads and on a hill. They have not been kept up at all, are rutted badly and need some attention.

I'm hoping someone has some tips or trick to help get them repaired and to keep them in good shape. I have a FEL, box blade, and a grader blade for my tractor.

 

[DT86]

I'd start with the box blade and the teeth down all the way to break up the center humps in your ruts.

If you then need to move material up hill use the grader blade on an angle. Then pack it as tight as you can by driving over it in as many paces as possible.

Next consider geo fabric and gravel.

 

[Gordon Gould]

It takes some time to learn how to use road tools but your dirt roads are perfect place to do that. Other than the mechanics of how to do it the best advise I can give is to work small sections at a time and go very slow. Make very small cuts at first. Just take a little material off the top. Imagine a level surface over the road and concentrate on keeping the blade moving along that surface. You will need to keep your hand on the 3 pt control all the time and continually adjust your blade height. You can't expect to just set the blade height and go. When the nose of the tractor goes up you need to raise the blade so you won't dig to deep. When the nose goes down lower the blade. It will be slow work at first but if you just cut a little at a time each pass should get better and better and you will never end up with a big mess that was worse than when you started. If you do small sections you will get less frustrated. Remember it is a skill you need to learn and it is entirely normal to have trouble at the start. So just relax and have fun learning road work.
Do a search and reading on here, there is a mountain of info.

gg

 

[vtsnowedin]

My tip of the day is to be careful not to drag topsoil from the ditches and roadside up onto your gravel. An inch of topsoil can contaminate a foot of good gravel until it becomes just mud when wet.

 

[jeff9366]

In order to eliminate potholes you need to rip to the bottom of same. You cannot just fill potholes in; they return almost immediately.

Fortunately, you have the tools.

 

[RedNeckRacin]

Do lots of reading here from the experts. Center for Dirt and Gravel Road Studies

 

[BigTee]

Thanks for all the help. I have a little bit of level road, I will do some work on it to try and get the feel for it before I start on the hills.

 

[Ed of all trades]

The important thing is DRAINAGE. If you can't get the water out of the road you will have ruts and mud. The proper shape for a road is rounded. Everyone today thinks of gravel roads, we had a mile long dirt road that was not muddy and had little gravel showing. It had a rounded shape and good ditches with side drains and pipes where needed. I we a fireman and you could fly out of that road and there was no gravel to throw you. If you got a muddy spot you put down a little gravel but the big thing was you cleaned out the ditches with a road blade every year and pulled it up into the road to round it again. Ed