New Driveway and Polebarn

[rswyan]

The basic construction is all 2" x 4" lumber except for a pair of 2" x 8" x 60" pieces I used as side rails.

The screen/grate dimensions are 6' wide x 5' long, and it is placed on a roughly 45 degree angle.

The 2" x 4" rails in the screen/grate are placed on 6" centers, and I used some welded wire fencing with 1" square mesh that I picked up at Lowes to around $18. I fastened the welded wire mesh to the screen/grate using 1/2" long, 1/4 crown staples - over 1000 of them.

Because I was in a hurry I air nailed the unit together rather than using screws which I'm sure would have been better. I used 3" nails in my framing nailer - some ring shank and some smooth .....

The unit is very heavy ... but seems to be holding up pretty well to being moved around - but I use alot of care when moving it.

 

[rswyan]

I was surprised at how well the 1" wire mesh worked in terms of screening - the material that gets through the screen is very fine - probably nothing larger than 3/8" to 1/2" at most. It looks so clean that I'm thinking about using it instead of sand as bedding for the remainder of the gas/water line trenches.

The screen/grate is removable - it just lays in the frame and can be lifted out by two people.

I have a second grate that I haven't quite finished yet - I'm building it to clean what was originally washed No. 57 gravel that has gotten contaminate/dirty. The 2" x 4" rails on that one are spaced a little wider - 12" O. C. - and it uses 1/4" mesh hardware cloth.

 

[rswyan]

Finally getting the north side whipped into shape - got the bank cut down, the wet/mucky spots cleaned out, and the rough grading is done ..... next item will be to get the french and surface drains installed on this side:

 

[EddieWalker]

Finally getting the north side whipped into shape - got the bank cut down, the wet/mucky spots cleaned out, and the rough grading is done ..... next item will be to get the french and surface drains installed on this side:

Congrats. It looks beautiful!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Eddie

 

[wmonroe]

Looking very good.

 

[rswyan]

Thanks guys !

My wife came home from work the other evening and said: "The hill is gone - you got rid of it !"

Amazing what a little grading with the boxblade will do ....

There's actually a couple of spots where I can reduce the slope a little more ...... and I might do it this weekend if we get the other stuff completed and time permits - but, at this point, there is no place on any side where I'm concerned about taking the Kubota sideways on a slope.

Today we got the rest of the south side french drain completed and got the 4" surface and southeast downspout drains tied into the 6" solid pipe, and backfilled. And the wife says she loves working with the screened clay .... :thumbsup: :laughing:

Tomorrow, we'll get the north side french/surface/downspout drains installed and tied into the ones in the rear (east side) and into the catch basin on the northwest corner. After that it will be time to slap the visqueen and 1/2" EPS insulation on the skirtboards, start backfilling with topsoil, then toss on some grass seed and hope it comes up at some point.

Weather is supposed to be good tomorrow and Saturday - no rain until sometime on Sunday .... so the big push is on ....

 

[rswyan]

Couple of days ago - the day before the big storm blew in - we managed to get the french/downspout/surface drains on the north side installed and tied into the drains on the rear (east) side, and the catch basin at the northwest corner.

The wife was a real sport on this - she did pretty much all of the fine detailing in the trench (after I dug them out with the backhoe) - backfilling and leveling the bottom, packing it, checking for slope, etc. She was very picky about it all - and did a great job.

Good thing too - because it just poured. No idea how much we actually got, but I know that just before the line of storms passed over us it dissipated somewhat - and we got hammered pretty good. Looking at the radar, just north and south of us it didn't appear to ease up at all .... so they must have really gotten drenched.

North side french drain:

 

[rswyan]

Couple of days ago - the day before the big storm blew in - we managed to get the french/downspout/surface drains on the north side installed and tied into the drains on the rear (east) side, and the catch basin at the northwest corner.

The wife was a real sport on this - she did pretty much all of the fine detailing in the trench (after I dug them out with the backhoe) - backfilling and leveling the bottom, packing it, checking for slope, etc. She was very picky about it all - and did a great job.

Good thing too - because it just poured. No idea how much we actually got, but I know that just before the line of storms passed over us it dissipated somewhat - and we got hammered pretty good. Looking at the radar, just north and south of us it didn't appear to ease up at all .... so they must have really gotten drenched.

North side french drain:

 

[rswyan]

Catch basin with 6" solid line and 4" french drain lines tied in.

In hindsight, I wish I had used a deeper catchbasin than 2' - it would have allowed the french drain to be placed deeper in the ground.

Part of my reluctance was being unsure of how much slope/elevation change I actually had for the 8" pipe that drains the basin over's it's 100' run .... and part of it was the additional cost, although that was fairly minimal.

 

[rswyan]

We worked the day of the storm, up until it came in, around 3 PM, on the assumption that this was probably going to be it for the year .... things would get wet and due to the lower temps we've been seeing, they would stay wet, making it rough to work outside.

I stayed out in the barn with an umbrella while storm blew in - so that I could take a look at things and make sure everything was working correctly. It was about 50/50 on the surface drains - due to the rush to just get them in, we weren't real precise about the grading or the height we set them at - about half were 1/4" to 1/2" too high. They will have to adjusted again anyways after we place the topsoil and establish the final grade.

Good news was the half of them that did function and drain, easily handled everything that came down - nothing close to water coming near the barn.

Also that the grade on the backside of the barn was sloped enough that it drained north to south, as intended - this was kinda funny, since looking at it visually, it didn't appear that there was any grade at all.

And the very best news of all was that after 24 to 48 hours after the storm, almost all of the ground was pretty dry and solid, except for a couple of puddles in low spots and some areas where there were piles of leaves holding the moisture in.

Looks like we will have good weather (no rain) for the next week or so ... so we might be able to get a little more done before we call it quits for the year on the outside.

 

[jeepcat]

AWESOME thread!

I found this doing a search for Cleary buildings. I am close to trading with them on a 42 x 56 x 12 energy mizer and I am glad to hear you had a good experience with them.

Moreover, my building is going to be built into a corner cut. I was working on my grading contours yesterday - but after reading / seeing all of this I might need to be a little less cocky about my ability to get water away from the shop LOL.

Thanks!

 

[rswyan]

Well .... it's time to bring this one back to life like .... Lazarus rising from the tomb .... time to .... git 'er done ....

I've actually been working on it for the last month or so .... just been so focused on making it happen that I haven't really been taking a whole lot of pictures or posting about it ....

I've been doing some observing .... and contemplating things .... and have made some decisions/changes regarding how I want to finish off the exterior perimeter:

1. There were three smaller trees (5" to 8" diameter, 25' to 30' tall) on my property on the backside of the barn that I was originally trying to keep. Since the barn is in essentially in a wooded area and surrounded on all sides by trees (the morning and afternoon sure are nice), and since removing these three trees will allow me to extend the slope over a greater distance and reduce the acuteness of the incline (which ought to make it easier to get some grass growing on it and reduce washouts) I decided to remove them:

​

I also removed the ash tree with the two trunks in the center (background) of the last image .... and I'm not done yet ....

Have a couple of larger poplars I will remove for sure and maybe a few others as well .... easier to take them down now versus having to remove them from the barn after they have fallen.

The change in elevation from the surrounding grade on the backside of the polebarn varies from 5'+ on the north end, to around 3' or less on the south end.

 

[rswyan]

Here's a little update on the drainage issues:

For the most part it hasn't been too bad .... on the surface, the rear (east side) has pretty good flow from the north end to the south end (which is where I want the water to go)

There is one spot right at the northeast corner where there is a often a small, shallow puddle after it rains - this should be easy to handle with a little finish grading ....

There is a trail (visible in the third photo above - the tractor is parked on it) which is on the property line - the area to the right in the photo (which is my neighbors property) generally slopes slightly towards my property and the barn. The solution for this will be to grade the slope back to the trail, leaving it (the trail) about 6' wide (wide enough for my tractor and the neighbors Gator) and build up a berm on the trail, thereby sloping the trail back towards the neighbors property .... which will cause any surface runoff from his land to run down the trail past the barn area and into the woods below the barn ....

 

[rswyan]

The north side of the barn (just visible on the right in the first photo above) is more problematic - it catches surface flow from perhaps as far as 200 or 300 yards away .... during a heavy rain the runoff coming down can be considerable. The change in elevation on the north side varies from 5'+ to probably 7'+ above grade at the polebarn .... this change (the slope) occurs over about a 30' to 35' area.

Heavy surface runoff + steeper slope = potential problem with washouts and getting grass to grow to hold the soil in place.

The solution I came up with was to try and eliminate the runoff before it got to the slope by installing a pair of catch basins, at two locations up at the edge of the woods, just at the top of the slope.

I cobbled the catch basins up by cutting a 5' long chunk of 12" smooth bore PVC culvert I had lying around in half. For the one I'm using a cast iron grate I had lying around that fits perfectly inside the culvert (held up by a couple of pieces of 1/2" rebar), the other one I had to spring for a plastic grate designed specifically for this purpose. Each basin is drained by a 6" pipe, which are joined downstream with a wye, with the 6" line eventually running into the concrete catch basin at the northwest corner of the barn:

​

 

[rswyan]

In order to reduce the steepness of the slope where it's the worst - the northeast corner - I decided that I'm going to have to do a short retaining wall on that corner. The retaining wall will be built out of rock which was obtained when we excavated the pad for the barn.

This will allow me to channel any runoff away from that corner, which has been problematic in terms of washouts and erosion - and in terms of moistness in that corner near the barn - towards the concrete catch basin on the northwest corner - or down the backside of the barn to the south toward the woods.

I'm not totally happy about it for a couple of reasons:

1. the additional labor involved, and

2. a 3'+ dropoff creates a hazard when operating equipment near it ....

But I don't see any real way around it .... clearing more trees off the north side and attempting to extend the slope (to reduce the steepness of the grade) is problematic - because the further north you go, the more the elevation increases ....

Following another TBN'ers lead, I've dug a channel at the bottom of the cut for the wall to seat the base course of rocks in to secure them, and hopefully reduce any movement from freeze/thaw cycles (I don't want to have to do this again in a few years):

​

I'll use geo-tex landscape fabric and possibly gravel behind the rocks that make up the wall to try and avoid problems .... might even stick some 4" perforated flex at the bottom to facilitate it draining.

 

[rswyan]

One other thing worth mentioning .... hindsight being 20/20 and all ....

About a month or so ago we had a pretty good storm come thru and we got dumped on pretty good .... had about 3/4" of inch of rain in 30 minutes or less ....

I made it point to stay out at the barn when this came thru so I could see what was happening and see how things were working .... even brought the umbrella ....

First thing I noticed was that on the north end of the barn there was water overflowing out of the pipes that the gutter downspouts connect to .... really bad on the northeast downspout and not quite as much on the northwest one ....

The gutters on the barn are 6" K-style, drained by 3"x4" downspouts. Each downspout should be able to handle 1200 sq. ft. of roof .... and there are 4 of them .... 1200 sq. ft. x 4 = 4800 sq. ft of roof (the building only has a 3024 sq. ft. footprint - so even with the additional square footage from the roof slope I should be golden)

The hard line (4") for the downspout in that northeast corner is tied into a 4" line .... which also has four 4" surface drains feeding it, down the line after the downspout ....

BAD IDEA ....

Normally, for most rainfall rates around here, it probably wouldn't be a problem .... maybe - but for a heavy rainfall having five 4" openings feeding a 4" line is a problem .... (and the problem was exacerbated by the fact that the 4" drain line was partially blocked from soil that had entered the surface drains due to erosion on the slope)

I was trying to be cheap and didn't fully think it through at the time .... :confused2:

The immediate handle was to install a 4" line for the northeast corner downspout (separate from the surface drains), and run it over near the northwest corner downspout, then dump that into a 6" line before the northwest downspout and connect the northwest downspout to the 6" line.

Actually, the way I constructed it, I have the downspouts tied into both their own line - and the surface drain line - with gravity and the way it was put together favoring the downspouts own line .... hopefully it will never back up again (since the downspouts are right next to the buildings corner posts)

There was no issue on the south end of the barn - there are no surface drains there, and the downspouts are on there own dedicated line ....

Moral of story: When it comes to drainage plumbing, the amount of egress should be at least equal to, if not greater than, the amount of ingress .... :thumbsup:

 

[rswyan]

One upside to extending out the area for the slope on the backside of the barn, and doing the retaining wall is that it yielded a substantial amount of clay and some very beautiful sandy loam which I can use as fill inside the barn:

​

One of the other changes I decided on is about the slab around the outside. Some where along the line I had decided that I would put a 5' slab all the way around the outside perimeter, for outside storage and to keep water away from the building.

I'm still going to do 5' on the rear, but I've decided that it would be nice to make them a little larger on the north and south ends of the building.

I'm going to shoot for a 10' wide slab on north end, where I'm limited by the slope .... and 18' or better or the south end .... big enough to park a vehicle on and be able to get around it to work on it.

To that end I've been adding fill (about 1 1/2' on the southwest corner) and compacting it on the south side.

 

[wmonroe]

Very nice. Thats tough with the drainage issue, but it sounds like you have it taken care of. The bigger concrete slabs will be great.