Woulda been tough by hand!

Phils · Sep 14, 2006

I've been trying to make my driveway more "fire truck friendly". We live in a forest fire area and I didn't want a truck to turn away because of the driveway condition.

One day with my trusty PT and a chainsaw yielded the driveway improvements shown (since we all like pictures). As I know there are firefighters among us, let me know if you have suggestions because at this point I'm calling it "done", except for some more loads of gravel.

Phil

HomeBrew2 · Sep 14, 2006

Looks good Phil! Are your oak leaves falling already?

Phils · Sep 14, 2006

Haven't noticed oak leaves falling yet, but today was cool so they may start soon. Unless you mean the live oak trees (mostly what I have) and those leaves fall all summer. The leaves are what supply the tree moisture during our dry summers. They seem programmed to turn brown and fall off one by one, with the rest remaining green, until it starts raining.

They falling in Dunlap already?

Phil

HomeBrew2 · Sep 14, 2006

No (except a few from the usual heat stress), they seemed to be all over your road in the pic. Must just be from the clearing you did.

Phils · Sep 14, 2006

Those are "live oak" leaves, which is what those trees are in the photos. We have quite a few "real" oaks that lose ALL the leaves in the fall. The live oak lose what they need to quench thirst but keep most of their leaves year 'round.

I did spread them around along with the "redistribution" of the existing gravel this last weekend.

Phil

pajoube · Sep 14, 2006

Phils said:
I've been trying to make my driveway more "fire truck friendly". We live in a forest fire area and I didn't want a truck to turn away because of the driveway condition.

One day with my trusty PT and a chainsaw yielded the driveway improvements shown (since we all like pictures). As I know there are firefighters among us, let me know if you have suggestions because at this point I'm calling it "done", except for some more loads of gravel.

Phil

Very nice job.
PJ

KMA · Sep 15, 2006

It looks much more attractive too! Good job on a very nice looking driveway.

pajoube · Sep 15, 2006

KMA said:
It looks much more attractive too! Good job on a very nice looking driveway.

Welcome KMA
PJ

KMA · Sep 15, 2006

pajoube said:
Welcome KMA
PJ

Thank you PJ.

Phils · Sep 17, 2006

Thanks, KMA and welcome to the PT group!

And what I shudda said in the first post (but ommitted in my haste) was:

Started out the morning and scraped with the box blade, quickly followed up by some mini-hoe work to get down low on the two liveoak trees that I needed to remove. Every inch lower cut off with a chain saw is 15 minutes less with the stump grinder. I didn't cut the trees into firewood, instead I just carried them off to a neighbor with the grapple bucket. He gladly accepted the limbed 10' timbers (maybe 8 or 9) and it was quicker for me to dump them there than carry them back home.

Following a few hours with the stump grinder, I bulldozed and then levelled using the box blade again. Eight hours total from "fire truck scary" to "fire truck friendly'".

Phil