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Road and driveway maintenance
Is there a good book on road construction and maintenance that meant for the average person and not an engineer? I have taken it on myself to maintain our subdivision road and my driveway and parking area. The road is one mile long with a steep hill at the entrance. I enjoy doing it but I need to know more about the right way to do it.
Murf, I hope you offer some info on this please.
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Road and driveway maintenance
kwschumm, thank you for the site on roads. I just looked through it and that is what I needed and I put in in my favorites for refference. I looked for books but they were mostly engineering books and not geared to the subdivision/farm road crowd like me.
Grinder, I have thought about going to the highway dept shop and talking to them. I think I will do that this coming week.
When I got my tractor last summer I started doing the road. I know some about crowning the road and ditching it. Nothing has been done to it except grading and gravel since the subdivision was started in 4/1998. It was a gravel farm road then and still is because all the lots are zoned ag2. I have started ditching my property first. I didn't want to mess up the neighbors land untill I knew what I was doing. The main reason for the tractor was to keep the road up.
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Road and driveway maintenance
Murf, thank you very much. After 4 or 5 tries I was able to download the Adobe file. For some reason it did not want to download. It has 104 pages but I may print it because I don't enjoy reading that much at the 'puter. I printed the site kwshumm listed. I found I was doing the right things for the most part. I have a NT254 tractor with a FEL and a box grader, grader blade and ditch bucket to do the work with. Our road is a very old (about 1900) farm road and was not put in right and I have a lot of changes to make to get the drainage right. Most of what I did was common sense things which turned out right. The first 2/3 of the road is very old and has a fair base. The new 1/3 is below the surrounding ground and needs to be built up and ditched. I have crowned the older part but the new part will not crown easy. We need a lot more gravel, what is called here dense grade. it is 3/4" to dust and packs like concrete. I have been ditching my property to learn how to do it and found I was doing it right according to the booklet kwshumm posted. I just need to finish the job when it gets dry enough. We have a steep hill at the entrance and I have been digging big rocks out of the road to get it gradeable. I enjoy the road work and that is why I bought the tractor. What is a landscape rake? I am going to build a drag with railroad spikes in it to loosen up the gravel better than the box grader. I plan to make it just wide enough for one lane so I don't mess up the crown of the road. I will make it so I can adjust the angle of the spikes from front to rear to dig or just smooth the gravel. Most the time I use the grader blade backwards to smooth the road after I loosen it and crown it. I will read the DOT publication you posted to get more ideas. I plan to use calcium chloride after we gravel it next summer like you suggested in another post.
Thanks, Carl
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Road and driveway maintenance
That DOT publication should be mandatory reading for anyone doing gravel drives or roads.
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Road and driveway maintenance
I will have to look into that. It sounds like it may be worth having one. Thanks
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Road and driveway maintenance
re: liability. We are in a private subdivision with one road one mile long and cul-de-sac at the end. The only traffic is owners and visitors. I have a mirror on my tractor and watch for animals, people, cars, etc. I will ask my insurance co. about it but the only hot spot is the entrance with the highway.
re: crowning. I am convinced that you need a slight crown to the road. Our road is terrible as it has never been taken care of. It has a concave surface and the water runs down the road in many places. I have tried to crown it and where I could it stays dry. If the road were higher than the surrounding land you may not have to crown it but traffic would put tire tracks in it and the water would run down those. If it is crowned slightly you would have to dress it less often. I haven't crowned my driveway yet but I blade it often. My driveway is a problem because it goes down a hill and turns to the parking area in front of the underground home and shop/garage. Runoff is a problem, so I tried to direct the water to the inside of the drive so it goes to the parking lot and then slows down and goes over the hill. I get some slight erosion on the road but I can blade it out. I am thinking about a ditch on the inside with a small catch basin at the bottom of the hill and a drain under the road to take the water over the hill. I have been experimenting on my property so I don't botch the meighbors land up and make them mad. I am working on the subdivision road from our home to the highway on both sides because it's ok with the owners. That is the down hill part and needs a lot of work. We are supposed to have a home owners association but we have never had a meeting. No one pays me and I would rather keep it that way. We all get along and I want it to stay that way. When it comes time to work the road on the top of the hill if the owners back there don't want me to do it I won't do it.
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Road and driveway maintenance
Ahhh, I see what you mean now. Yes, I will talk to my insurance person about that aspect and see what they say. It may be that I will need a rider of some sort to cover me on my homeowners policy. It's a shame that we have the lawsuit system we do. It would be nice if you had to prove intent or neglect to sue.
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Road and driveway maintenance
Aw geez Grinder, more to deal with now huh. Its's a shame an old geezer like me can't do a little research, get on his tractor and do a good deed for himself and his neighbors without some jerk suing over something that was probably his own fault. Our subdivision is called Riverview subdivision and is registered with the county. It is supposed to have an owners association but we never have meetings. One of us gathered money from each of us and had rock put on the road twice and that's all that has been done. My wife does research for a lawyer so I will try to get some free advise from him. Man, this is taking all the fun out of the road work. Bummer.
Hey doc, I understand the flat road idea and use it on my driveway because of the way the land lays. It's important to look way beyond the road when deciding how to grade it. I watch it when it is dry and I watch it when it rains. The water flow tells a lot if you just look and it tells me this road needs a lot of work.
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Road and driveway maintenance
doc, there are no gutters or curbs but some ditches. It's all gravel about one mile long with a cul-de-sac at the end. The first 2/3 mile is about 100 years old and went to an old brick home that was pushed into a pond that was on my property. The last 1/3 mile is not very good at all. It is lower than the surrounding ground and turns into a river. The part I live on is the old part and I have ditched my side some and will work both sides if I can do it without fear of lawsuit. I have box graded the whole road and tried to get it to some decent condition. There are a couple of long posts on the first and second pages that describe it some more. I sure hope I can work this out as I enjoy doing the road work.
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Road and driveway maintenance
Talked to the lawyer today and he said that the only way I would have a problem is if I did something that created a hazard. Such as a ditch across the road or causing water to run over the road or making a ditch to deep. He suggested that we organize a home owners committee and get them to approve me doing the road work. He didn't say it but I think by doing that the liability is spread over all of us that way. I have been wanting to organize us anyway so now is the time. I will also check on insurance. He said he didn't think there would be a problem as long as I used correct road building procedures.
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12-30-2005, 21:26 
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