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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
Here's a link to some good information on gravel roads.
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Road and driveway maintenance
I think it would be tough to find a book on your particular
climate and soil conditions.
I would suggest a local road commisioner. one with a least
twenty years behind him.
One thing I think would apply anywhere is that water is the enemy. Get it off and keep it away as fast as possible.
In other words, crown the surface and ditch it to keep it as dry as possible.
Good luck!
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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
Carl, the site Ken linked to is good, but IMHO, it is a little more important to have a working knowledge first. If you don't understand the what, why, where and how, you will just be wandering aimlessly in the dark. You don't need a 4 year college program, just the basics.
One of the best examples I've found is a US DOT publication, linked to below. While it is aimed at 'real' roads, and for people who do it for a living, it is a really good crash course for anybody. Well worth the time to read it.
IMHO, the other critical item is the equipment. Without the right stuff it can be a long and tiresome job. With the good stuff, it's a joy to do.
I would suggest a good box blade is the first choice. Next is a coin toss between a good landscape rake or rear blade, hopefully both having a double offset hitch. They are for pulling the shoulders back without driving in the ditch to do so.
Ideally you would have a hydraulically adjustable, tow-able box blade with independently adjustable gauge wheels or pull-behind grader attachment. Either would be a serious investment to the average homeowner.
As always, questions are always free,  .
Best of luck.
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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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That DOT publication should be mandatory reading for anyone doing gravel drives or roads.
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Carl, glad I could be of some assistance. It's amazing how much there is to know about something as simple as a gravel roadway isn't it?
A landscape rake is basically a set of large curved spring tines, about the same size, shape & format as a rear blade, but instead of a mouldboard, it has flat spring tines about 1/2" wide and spaced closely together. It is very good at surface finishing and will usually roll all the larger stones of the surface for you. It is also handy for doing things like raking all the leaves off in the spring, or clearing light snow falls, without chewing up the road surface.
Best of luck.
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The best tool I have for gravel road maintenance is my rake with Gage wheels and drop down blade. It's like an all in one tool.
David
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I will have to look into that. It sounds like it may be worth having one. Thanks
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