Soupy road - need help

[hayden]

Help!

The road leading to my place in VT is an unmaintained dirt road. It's not much more than a logging road, and this time of year it turns into a complete mud hole. I'm looking for advise on how to best fix it.

I've started by trenching along the uphill side so there is a collection point for the runoff, and the trenches lead down to the low point where I will install culvert pipes to get it across to the down hill side and away from the road. I figure this will get the "local water table" down and is the first step. From there I'm not sure what to do.

I need to fill in the bad areas with something that will form a sound base, and not sink away in a few years.

I've though of using 2" crushed stone, but I think it will sink away in short order. But, the logging guys used it last spring to their satisfaction when they needed to use the road, and the areas they did are in pretty good shape.

I've thought of using bank run, aka quarry mix, aka whatever you call it locally, but again I'm worried about it sinking away.

Then there's this Road Fabric that I've been reading about with great interest. Maybe I should put some of that down over the bad areas and then cover with stone or quarry mix?

It's a 1/2 mile section of road, not all of which is bad, but because of the length I need to be cost sensitive in what treatment I use.

I'm heading there thursday and would love to line up the necessary people to get whatever materials I need, but I don't really want to pick a material from a hat.

Can the voices of experience help?

 

[scruffy]

Hayden, what do you have available on your property? Shale?
If you have a shale out-cropping, it would make a very good base over time. Tractor time, /w3tcompact/icons/smile.gif and spreading on the road. I did that with 2.5 miles of dirt based logging road that was converted to a driveway...it had up to 1 foot of clay mud in spots...it has held steady for at least a decade now, with an occassional culvert blowout...dad-burn monsoons! (yeah right, in Northern Cal) Cost was very effective, just time and gas.

 

[GlueGuy]

Peter,

We had a pretty good mud hole a couple years ago. We went after it in two treatments. The first treatment was to dump a couple truckloads (20 tons as I recall) of 1.5X2" course-crush rock on it. We pounded that in for a while (I don't remember how long) by driving over it. I think the depth was about 4" in the area we dumped.

Later we dumped several truckloads of #2 rock, and #2 recycle (crushed concrete with lime added) to a depth of at least 10". After it was all said and done, the road was about a foot taller. It's stayed pretty dry ever since. We may put another load of #2 on it next year...

The GlueGuy

 

[AndyR]

I would try the NRCS (I think it's Natural Resource Conservation Service) - what used to be known as the USDA Soil Service. They should be at the local cooperative extension office. These folks know soils and are usually 5 steps ahead of the highway departments on the engineering side of things. Best of all it doesn't usually cost you a cent!

Getting the water away is a great start. Try walking your road and checking for any particular soft areas just off the road - that will give you an idea of additional water sources. Personally I would lean toward large aggregate and stay away from the local bank-run/whatever mix if you are not real sure about it. I have used a product from the local quarries called ledge-pack which is generally fines and smal chipped stone (the sawdust of the mining business). It packs very well and has good properties on a flat or road surface though I would have concerns about erosion on a poorly drained surface. cost runs about 25% less then crushed granite. Good Luck!

Andy in NH

 

[MarkV]

Peter,

Sounds like good advice is coming your way. I do believe the most cost effective way to get a road right is to spend the time on drainage. We had a hard time with a road that just kept eating gravel until I redid the ditches and added a couple of culverts. If I were doing it today I would use the road fabric. From what I have seen on our road, the cost of the fabric would have been saved in gravel over the years. Cowboydoc has some first hand experience with road fabric and seems very happy with the results.

Every area of the country seems to have a differnt system when it comes to gravel use. Around here, if we had a situation like yours, we would first put down a #4 gravel(1 1/2 to 2 1/2") as a base. After that has worked in we top with a crusher run mix which is crushed granite 1/2 to 1 1/2" in size with lots of stone dust to bind things together. I think it works best to put down about 3" of crusher run, let it work in for a season, then add another 3" as needed. Once a road bed is in pretty good shape, I like to put a thinner top coat of "57" (1/2 to 1 1/2" washed) gravel down. The top coat helps hold down the stone dust that gets tracked into the house. One caution, "57" will stay loose on the top of the road bed, so it is not used on the steep grades of the road.

Way I see it, this is a good news, bad news thing. Bad news is that the cost of gravel adds up fast. The good news is, it will take a lot of hours on that 2910 to get things right./w3tcompact/icons/smile.gif

MarkV

 

[hayden]

Thanks for all the tips. I also re-read the thread on Harv's mud hole and that helped too.

I think the steps are clear, and I'll take them one at a time rather than rush through them all blindly.

1) Fix the drainage. This is the most important thing. If done right, and with a bit of luck added to the mix, I might not have to do too much more.

2) Fill the worst spots. Where it's bad, I think I'll use the fabric followed by some fill to top it off.

Unfortunately, there is no on-property source of good fill, so I need to bring it in. I'll use whatever is locally available. Since the road only gets occational use, it doesn't need to be super nice, just passable. I think bringing in 4"-12" of layered fill along the while length would break the bank since it's 1/2 mile run. For this reason, I'll do the ditching thing and see how far that gets me.

As someone noted, this also gets me maximum tractor time.

Thanks again,

Peter

 

[dieselpwr]

Hayden

We have pretty heavy soil around here too & it gets nasty when spring & water come. When we put in the driveway we had some large large breaker run dumped first (4"-7" limestone with some lime / clay to make it pack) about 1' to 1-1/2' thick. We put smaller road material on top of that (3/4" crushed limestone with lime / clay). Some excavators also recomend digging out topsoil before applying the above.

For us it has held up very well with minimal upkeep (never had a pothole yet) When it is really wet in the spring you can actually watch the whole system float (sink a little & then spring right back up) when a heavy truck drives over it. Really cool to watch. /w3tcompact/icons/cool.gif

Troy

 

[Anonymous Poster]

I too am investigating road building/maint. Being fairly new to the area of my new (2 1/2 year) property (160 acres) I have been asking a lot of questions about materials sources for road building/maint. While getting several loads of concrete delivered I "chatted up" the drivers. It so happens that the cement company saves the stuff they wash out of the trucks when they return from a delivery. This is sand, gravel, and very litle cement. They sell it C H E A P, cheaper than the equivalent amount of gravel. I can have it delivered for far less than buying the same gravel as gravel. Unless there is a hidden danger (ideas anyone?), this seems to be a cost effective way to leverage off of their recycling/waste management. I got a great deal on 4-5 yds of gravel with sand but it is probably not a frequent oportunity. The cement company sent out a mixer truck with a defective load of concrete (no cement in the mix). I ofered to give them a place to dump it so they wouldn't have to haul it back to the plant. Free was a good price.

Patrick

 

[Darins]

Patrickg, I used around 400yrds of that concrete stuff for my pole building. It packs real good and was cheaper then anything else I could get. I have been real happy with it but it did have some pretty good size chunks of conrete in it. I think that it would be a good base for a road though. You would still probably want to put some type of gravel on top of it. But you sure would have a great base. Good luck Darin

 

[gordon]

Hayden the neat thing about a muddy drive or road is this--if you add gravel 9 parts and still have 1 part mud in New England it equals 10 parts mud./w3tcompact/icons/smile.gif

Here are a couple of links that might help you out.

http://www.co.saint-marys.md.us/dpw/docs/drainqa.htm

Here is a good one from your neck of the woods, maintaining roads Maine style.

http://www.state.me.us/mdot/planning/csd/geotext.htm

Here is one that everyone should have bookmarked, full of info about road making in the woods.

http://www.na.fs.fed.us/spfo/pubs/stewardship/accessroads/accessroads.htm

Here is forest road making British Columbia style

http://www.for.gov.bc.ca/tasb/legsregs/fpc/fpcguide/road/chap6.htm

Last one
http://www.geomembranes.com/dn_textl.htm

After a bunch of research using a geotextile fabric is the only way to go.

Here is a link to another thread about geotextile fabric on a forestry board.
http://www.timberbuyer.net/cgi-bin/forum/YaBB.pl?board=Business&action=display&num=984927179&start=0

Gordon